by Jack Benton
‘I only want to talk,’ Slim said.
The woman chuckled again. ‘That’s what they all say,’ she said. ‘Take off your jacket and wait over there. I’ll give you a basic package. Half price, since it’s your first time, and a shy man always turns me on.’
Slim handed over a clutch of banknotes. It was most of what he had found in the basket this morning, even though his benefactor had declined to answer any of his questions.
The woman pocketed the money, then went through a door behind the curtain. Slim took off his clothes as the woman had asked, leaving on only a t-shirt and his jeans. He sat down on the edge of the bed and waited.
From somewhere behind him, a tape recorder clicked and the room filled with the sound of waves crashing onto a shore, punctuated by the odd cry of a gull. The lights dimmed. Slim watched the door uncomfortably, feeling less turned on and more part of a bizarre circus. He was just wondering whether to cut his losses and bail, when the door opened and the woman reappeared.
Her face was again veiled, but the rest of her was now visible. She wore a flowing wig of golden braids that draped over otherwise bare breasts. She was naked to the waist, but from there wore a sky blue skirt of glittery material that covered her feet. She shuffled forward, and only as she came into the circle of light did Slim understand why she wasn’t walking properly: the skirt was sewn together at the bottom, before fanning out again in a representation of a fish’s silvery tale.
‘Beatrice Winter,’ Slim said. ‘Old Bea.’
‘Less of the old, please,’ the woman said, lowering herself down beside him. ‘Well, look at you. You like to work out, don’t you?’
Slim, who hadn’t been near a gym in years, scoffed at what was an obvious line. ‘I’m a functioning alcoholic,’ he said.
‘And a real charmer,’ the woman added with a smirk. ‘Why don’t you just let me relax you?’ She tried to ease Slim down on to his back, but he resisted.
‘A mermaid,’ he said. ‘Is that what they claimed she was?’
The woman’s hands continued to work, but Slim noticed how her fingers had tensed as she massaged his shoulders.
‘To whom are you referring, darling?’
‘Beatrice. Old Bea. There was something wrong with her, wasn’t there?’
‘Look—’
‘I’ll pay extra if you tell me what you know.’
The woman’s hands paused before they began to work again. She let out a sigh, then said, her voice reverting to character, ‘My great-great-grandmother, the original Beatrice, was a wonder of the sea. Some say a siren, others a mermaid. Perplexing sailors all along the Dart River valley. Some say she climbed onto boats to pleasure weary travellers, others that she waited by the docks for the boats to come in.’
‘She wasn’t really a mermaid, was she?’
The woman sighed. ‘You’re not making this easy, are you?’ Reverting again to character, she added, ‘She could swim with a speed and grace few could believe.’
‘But she could walk on land like a woman, and have sex with sailors like a woman. Why did they call her a sea witch?’
The woman’s hands stopped moving and she let out a sigh. ‘I don’t think this is working, do you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Slim said. ‘I just wanted to know about Old Bea. I thought you might know something. This is just a circus act, isn’t it?’
Suddenly finding her modesty, the woman removed her wig and the veil attached to it, and held it over her exposed chest. Slim looked into the eyes of a woman in her early fifties, ruffled light brown hair starting to grey, face a little sour, skin a little worn.
‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked.
Slim gave a grim smile. ‘Finally something I understand,’ he said.
53
He sat with his legs dangling out over the edge of the pier. His head thudded from the cheap navy rum the woman named Kirsten had produced, which she told him was sometimes used to soften nervy customers, and he was pleased he had given her the last of his money as a bonus, to prevent him from buying more. After the first glass, his tongue had loosened and he had laid his soul bare, explaining that he was a private investigator trying to unravel the mysterious deaths of two people in Dartmouth a couple of months ago, an investigation that was going nowhere.
And another piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.
By the time half the bottle was gone, Kirsten’s tongue had also loosened enough to release its own bombshell.
‘He came here that night,’ she slurred. ‘He got my number from someone in a bar and showed up at my door. He told me two women he was with had pulled a runner on him. I did what I do and then we got talking. He was interested in much of the same stuff you were.’
‘About Old Bea?’
She gave a nervous laugh. ‘But less of the historical side. I got the impression he had a bit of a … deviant streak. We talked a bit, and we got on to her supposed daughter, Eliza. I told him what little I knew, and somewhere along the line he started on about seeing where she died.’
‘Eliza?’
Kirsten nodded. ‘He offered me far more money than I’d usually get for a night’s work. Not the kind of sum I can afford to turn down. I saw a couple of nights off and perhaps even a new set of tyres for that banger out the front there, so I took him up there.’
‘To Greenway? By boat?’
Kirsten had laughed at this. ‘Do I look like a sailor? Of course not. I drove, in that piece of junk I call a car. It’s been out of MOT for the last couple of months, but the money he offered was worth risking the police. The biggest surprise was that we made it.’
By road. The obvious way, the one Slim had overlooked.
‘It was getting light by the time we arrived. We parked where the ferry docks and walked through the woods. He was fascinated by the place. He wanted to have sex on the old bridge there, while the sun came up. I agreed, but then he squatted down and held up a ball of twine. I don’t know where it came from, whether he had it all along or he’d found it somewhere, but he tied it around his ankles then said he wanted me to do the same. Some weird kink thing, so we could screw like mermaids, or whatever. At my place I would have likely gone for it—encouraged it, even—but out there in the middle of nowhere, I got spooked, so I refused. He got angry, so I ran. He was drunk, his ankles were already tied, and so he had no chance of catching me. I left him there, and tried to forget about it until I saw the news reports of his death.’
‘And you didn’t go to the police?’
Kirsten rolled her eyes. ‘I’m a middle-aged prostitute who dresses as a mermaid. They’d have booked me or laughed at me. They never came knocking, so I figured I was clear. I had nothing to do with his death. It’s just that, in my … business … you meet a lot of people on the verge of something. Desperate people. People wanting something but not quite sure what it is.’
‘People like me?’
Kirsten laughed. ‘If there was a mould, you’d be a perfect fit. That’s why I told you. Perhaps that’s what you were looking for.’
Slim smiled at the memory. Kirsten had known him as he walked through the door. And while it was true that the information was a massive boost, it left him no closer to finding out what had happened to Carson.
Dead with string tied around his ankles, allegedly tied himself. The obvious answer was that Kirsten had left things unsaid, that she had perhaps allowed the game to go on longer before making her break for freedom. Slim, though, knew how well a bit of drink worked to bring out the truth, and had seen no lies in her face. She had told him straight, as best as she remembered it. Carson had met his demise after she had left. But an unfortunate accident, suicide, or murder, he was no closer to finding out.
Kirsten driving Carson out to Greenaway solved the problem of how he had got there. What it didn’t do, however, was link Eloise with a possible murder. Was it likely the girl had somehow followed them? Or had she perhaps guessed what Carson would do and lain in wait? Or was she now a
bsolved of any association?
He remembered her first message to him: I’ll kill you for what you did. Did she blame Slim for a murder she had wanted but missed the opportunity to commit for herself?
He squeezed his temples, his head aching more than ever.
54
Suicides. Witches. Mermaids. Slim stared at the words he had scribbled on a piece of paper before ripping it off the notepad and screwing it up. He glanced up at the café’s service counter but no one was paying him any attention. Picking up his pen, he began to jot notes and draw connecting lines all over again.
An hour of fruitless consideration later, he stepped out into a rainy morning. He let out a long, rasping series of coughs he had suppressed in the café’s quiet confines, stumbled down to Kingswear’s ferry port, and took a boat across the river to Dartmouth.
By the time he got off the ferry, the rain had got heavier. Not in the mood for huddling in shop doorways, and finding each café he passed crowded with sheltering tourists, he caught a local bus headed for Dartmouth’s new fishing heritage museum, which he was yet to visit.
Located at the southern edge of the estuary-hugging town on the road heading to the castle, Slim found its modern, Perspex corridors drab and unbefitting of a museum, perhaps explaining the dearth of customers as he wandered from one lifeless display to another. Light on the surface, each display told a history book rendition of the town’s industrial and fishing past, slowly leading to its transformation into an exclusive haunt of the rich and their marinas. There was little Slim hadn’t heard or read before, so when he spotted an arrow pointing to a cafeteria, he headed that way, pleased to see it sold soft drinks only, quieting the beast he had awoken the night before and which now sat on his shoulder, whispering temptations which would end this nightmare for good. After a relapse it was sometimes there, sometimes not, but he sensed this time he had gone too far, and that it wouldn’t leave without a fight.
There was only one other customer, a young man reading a newspaper. Slim was within a couple of steps of the counter when he caught a glimpse of the man’s face in a mirror behind the serving bar.
Alex Wade from the tour company.
Slim backed away, a survival instinct kicking in. Alex would surely recognise him, and if there was anyone outside the police who knew what he was being accused of, it was the tour company rep.
Ignoring the bemused frown on the server’s face, Slim backed up, pushing through the closest door he could reach to put himself out of sight.
He had expected a toilet or emergency exit, but instead found himself in a stock room with dimmed lights. As he took in his surroundings, he realised the room must supply both the cafeteria and an adjacent gift shop, with industrial-sized cans of tomato ketchup standing alongside boxes of trinkets and embossed tea towels.
He moved through the room towards the other door, marvelling at the kind of things customers rarely saw splurging out of the open tops of boxes. There were other things not boxed too: delicate handmade ornaments and a cluster of paintings wrapped in cellophane which appeared ready for display.
He paused to look at one, feeling an uneasy sense of familiarity. It showed a downriver view of the Dart Estuary, with Kingswear visible to the left, slightly clearer than Dartmouth to the right, appearing hazier as though caught in morning mist. The painter: Alan McDonald.
Slim was still staring at the painting when the door opened behind him. ‘You’re not allowed back here,’ someone said.
Without turning around, Slim lifted a hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I took the wrong door by mistake.’
Before the person behind him could say anything else, he moved quickly away from the paintings, out through a door that emerged into a brightly lit gift shop. Customers filled the narrow aisles, practically climbing over each other to view the lines of history books and racks of postcards. From the haunted look in the eyes that met his, Slim recognised them as Alex’s current tour party, and not wishing to spend longer among them than necessary, he eased his way through the throng to a door leading outside.
The road sloped away, seemingly about to drop into the estuary below before abruptly cutting back on itself and disappearing out of sight. A pub hugged the corner, a signboard outside naming it as THE LOOKOUT: DARTMOUTH’S MOST SCENIC BEER GARDEN.
The thought of an afternoon of oblivion made Slim’s eyes water. His resolve all but broken by days sleeping rough and a sickness that wouldn’t let go, he would have headed straight for the bar with the handful of change he had left, had it not been for the police car parked up at the roadside beside the museum’s small car park, and WPC Marion Oaks leaning against the front door, casually reading a museum pamphlet. As he stepped forward, she looked up. No surprise registered in her eyes as she stepped away from the door and said, ‘I wondered how long it would take you to get through that pokey little place. Get in.’
55
‘I suppose I would have been rumbled in the end,’ Marion said, turning the police car into a lane that cut up through trees towards the hilltop. ‘Your utter incompetence forced my hand. I couldn’t risk someone else picking you up.’
‘You’re the one who’s been leaving things for me?’
Marion shrugged. ‘If you think you’re equipped to survive living rough in that place, you’re doing a poor job of showing it.’
‘I set traps—’
‘I know. I watched you doing it.’
‘Watched me?’
‘There are cameras. You were watching your traps, Slim. You weren’t watching for those already set.’
‘Cameras?’
‘That house is private property. It has security cameras. They’re just hidden well to stop them getting stolen, and frankly, some have got a little damaged over the years. It’s been a while since my father checked or adjusted them.’
‘Your father? But Greenway … the National Trust—’
‘Owns the land as far as the old railway cutting. The rest was auctioned off back in the 1950s, including the land on which that old house stands.’
‘Your father—’
Marion nodded. ‘Actually, my grandfather bought it. I think at one time he thought he could turn the riverside land into a small marina, but he never found the time or money, and it’s pretty much stayed as it was the day he bought it. I did wonder about renovating the property one day when my father passes, but the cost would be prohibitive. The land is prone to subsidence due to its proximity to the river. It would take serious construction to make it safe.’ Marion sighed. ‘But I digress.’
‘If there are cameras—’ Slim began, then realised he was getting ahead of himself. ‘Why help me? Why not just arrest me for trespassing?’ He remembered an angry old woman once claiming a fine of up to five grand could be issued for trespass; surely by now he’d be close to the top end.
‘Because you wanted to know the answer. The deaths of both Irene Long and Max Carson have been classified as suicides. Their cases have been officially closed.’ Marion had turned off the lane onto what was little more than a dirt road. Branches brushed at the car’s sides as they continued steadily uphill.
‘But you don’t believe it.’
‘There are fingers in too many pies,’ Marion continued. ‘People don’t want an investigation.’
‘The council?’
Marion’s laugh took Slim by surprise. When she glanced at him, she even had a tear in her eye. ‘Come on, TV detective. You really think?’
‘The yachting clubs. The people with real money.’
‘Bingo.’
‘You’re taking backhanders?’
Marion laughed again. ‘Nothing so sinister. Veiled threats to remove funding from community projects. To withdraw long-term leases on community-used land. To build car parks over parks and put people out of jobs. To screw up the lives of those of us poor enough to have to live here all year round.’
‘But you don’t care. You think Long and Carson were murdered. You want to keep the inves
tigation open.’
‘There is evidence to suggest neither death was a suicide. And it goes against my integrity as a police officer to let this case go.’
‘You have evidence that your superiors suppressed to keep the yachting clubs happy?’
Marion rolled her eyes as she turned the car through an open farm entrance and bounced to a stop behind a thick, overgrown hedgerow.
‘You watch too much TV. Nothing was suppressed. It was just considered of too little value to investigate further. Manpower, resources. The usual excuses.’
‘So you let me keep my investigation open?’
Marion turned to face him. ‘At first I thought you were a rough sleeper. I actually did go out there to arrest you, take you somewhere a little less harsh. Possibly, given what else I’ve heard about you, somewhere with bars over the windows. Then I got a phone call from an old friend.’
‘Ben.’
Marion nodded. ‘Ben Holland was my class director at training college. He is a man I have a deep respect for, so when he told me an acquaintance of his was looking into the Carson case, I put two and two together. You were together in the military?’
‘Same platoon in the first Gulf War. He did a lot better afterwards than I did.’
‘Come on, Slim. You didn’t do too bad. Even I’d heard of you. You’ve closed some cases that couldn’t be closed.’
‘I’ve got lucky.’
‘The harder you work, the luckier you seem to get. My experience at any rate.’
Slim shrugged. ‘Well, I can’t have worked hard enough on this case.’
‘Hopefully I can help with that.’ She reached into a briefcase at her feet and withdrew a paper folder. ‘These are the case notes I could get copies of. Autopsy reports, that kind of thing. We didn’t have enough to nail anything down, but if there are things you’ve discovered that we haven’t….’
