Drown My Books

by Penny Freedman

  There is an unfamiliar car parked outside my house when I get home. This is quite usual in the summer, when people park here and haul their stuff down the steps onto the beach, but it is unexpected on a February evening. The light is on in the car and its occupant is reading. She doesn’t look up but I recognise her: she is an ex-colleague of my ex-lover and she dislikes me quite a lot. As I get out my key I hear the car door slam. Refusing to turn round, I unlock the door and switch on the hall light. Then I turn to greet her. ‘Hello, Paula,’ I say.

  I have the advantage; I saw her first. She peers at my unmade-up face and weird hair.

  ‘Bloody hell, Gina,’ she says. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I live here.’

  ‘Mrs Virginia Sidwell?’ she asks. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘It is.’

  She peers at me again. ‘Have you got married?’

  ‘Nope. I just got more unmarried. Maiden name. Do come in.’

  I lead the way into the sitting room and switch on the fire.

  ‘But you haven’t told me who you are,’ I say. ‘Aren’t you going to do your thing with your ID?’

  She produces her card. DI Paula Powell. Marlbury Police. I am impressed. It seems no time since she was made DS and David was so pleased with himself for getting her promoted in the face of opposition from some men who didn’t like to see a mouthy young woman being fast-tracked. She doesn’t like me because I got involved in one or two of David’s cases and that irritated the hell out of her. Also, I was convinced that she fancied him. I quite like her, actually, or at least admire her. That doesn’t mean I’m prepared to make things easy for her, though; when I admire people, I generally get competitive.

  ‘So what brings a Marlbury DI here?’ I ask. ‘Surely not the body on the beach. This is Dover’s pitch.’

  ‘Dover police are swamped,’ she says, sitting down unbidden. ‘They’ve asked us to help.’

  ‘Really? What’s swamped them?’ I sit down, too.

  She looks at me. ‘It’s confidential.’

  ‘Terrorism?’

  She lets a pause fall, and then says, ‘Let’s concentrate on this, shall we? Tell me exactly what happened this morning.’

  ‘This is a bit below your pay grade, isn’t it, Paula? A DI for an accidental death?’

  ‘An unexplained death. At present.’

  ‘Well, the Dover police already have my statement. Haven’t they passed it on?’

  ‘I’d like to hear it directly from you.’

  ‘OK.’ I speak very fast. ‘At approximately eight-fifteen this morning my dog found the body of a young woman on the beach about fifty yards from here. I recognised her as Kelly Field, who runs the village shop. I called 999.’

  ‘How was Kelly lying when you saw her?’

  ‘On her front.’

  ‘How did you recognise her, then?’

  ‘She dyed her hair purple. And I recognised her tracksuit.’

  ‘Did you touch her?’

  ‘I felt for a pulse.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you wait on the beach for the paramedics to arrive?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It was freezing cold, blowing a gale and pouring with rain.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else on the beach?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is that unusual?’

  ‘Not in the kind of weather we had this morning.’

  ‘You walk the dog there every morning?’ She glances at Caliban, who is pacing uneasily, disturbed by this unknown visitor.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Did you see anything at all unusual or different this morning?’

  I make an effort to visualise the scene. ‘I didn’t see anything much, to be honest, with the rain driving into my face.’

  A silence falls. She sits looking at me, as if willing me to come up with something more.

  ‘There was one thing,’ I say. ‘Not something I saw but something I didn’t hear. Or, rather, that Caliban didn’t hear. It is, in fact, a case of the dog that didn’t bark in the night-time.’

  She makes a sort of growling noise and says, ‘Let’s assume, shall we, that not being a professor of English, I don’t get your clever literary references. What didn’t you hear?’

  ‘Kelly. We didn’t hear Kelly. She comes – came – running past the house at about seven-thirty every morning, come what may, and went down the steps for a swim. Every morning she woke Caliban and he barked and woke me. This morning, he didn’t bark, so I assume she didn’t come by.’

  ‘Presumably there are other steps down to the beach.’

  ‘Some way along in either direction, but why use them?’

  We look at each other. We are both thinking the same thing, I’m sure, so I decide to say it.

  ‘If I were the police,’ I say, ‘I would be thinking that either she jumped from the sea wall or she was pushed.’

  She stands up. ‘Why are you always there, Gina?’ she asks. ‘How do you always get involved?’

  I stand up, too. ‘I’m not an ambulance-chaser, Paula,’ I say. ‘I’m there because I notice things and I think about them, and I get involved because I feel responsible. You could do with more people like me.’

  ‘You think?’ she says.

  As I’m escorting her to the door, I glance into the kitchen and I see Kelly’s copy of The World’s Wife lying on the table. A hot wave of embarrassment sweeps over me. At the time when I picked it up and brought it inside, I thought Kelly had died of natural causes and I couldn’t bear to leave a book out to be ruined. Now I see this is a proper police investigation and I have tampered with evidence. As usual when I know I’m in the wrong, I try to brazen it out.

  ‘Ah!’ I cry, picking up the book and shaking the sheets of kitchen paper out from between its leaves. ‘I meant to give this to DC Green this morning. I found it on the beach and I just had to bring it in out of the rain.’

  Paula’s face goes still and her mouth goes into a very straight line. With what seems to me to be ostentatious care, she takes gloves out of her pocket, dons them, takes the book from me and drops it into an evidence bag, also taken from her pocket.

  I think of telling her about the highlighting of the Medusa poem, but she doesn’t give me the chance.

  ‘What the fuck were you thinking, Gina?’ she asks. ‘Removing evidence from a crime scene? I could arrest you for this.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was a crime scene,’ I protest. ‘I thought it was hypothermia. It was cold enough and I thought —’

  She flips. Completely.

  ‘It’s a crime scene!’ She yells. ‘Someone pushed Kelly Field over the wall and then battered her head repeatedly against the stones. It doesn’t matter what you thought. You’re not supposed to think! You’re an arrogant, superior know-all and you need to stop thinking you know best. You need to stop thinking full stop. Just leave the thinking to us.’

  I stand and watch her as she gets herself under control. ‘We shall need your fingerprints,’ she says very quietly, ‘for elimination purposes. First thing tomorrow morning.’

  I panic. ‘In Marlbury?’ I ask. ‘Do I have to go to Marlbury?’

  I can’t go to Marlbury. She needs to understand that. It is my past and I’ve shut the door on it. Marlbury is the one place in the world I can’t go to.

  ‘Dover,’ she says. ‘I’m working out of Dover station.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, and then, ‘I’m sorry, Paula.’

  ‘You’ll come in and get your fingerprints done,’ she says, ‘and then you will keep right out of this investigation. If I find that you have been getting your nose into it in any way I shall arrest you for obstructing a police investigat
ion. Are we clear?’

  ‘We’re clear.’

  I watch her go back to her car. There was a time when a warning like that would have had me determined to muscle in on the investigation in any way I could, but this is my new life. This is my life of detachment and retreat where the world can go hang. Paula can have this all to herself. Count me out.

  Chapter Five

  THE GATHERING

  Friday 14th February 2014

  Lorna

  Lorna Dering started her morning by driving into Dungate to buy a local paper. It was usually delivered, along with their daily copy of The Independent, but the village shop had closed with its proprietor’s sudden death and she and her husband had agreed that he would buy the morning paper on his way to work. She wanted the local paper right away, though, both because it would have the story of Kelly Field’s death in it and because she liked to take it into the library. The small grant they got from the local authority to keep the library open did not stretch to daily newspapers but she was happy to provide the local one.

  Parking in front of the library, she let herself in and savoured the reassuring library smell – wood, paper, dust, and people, she supposed – some particles of sweat, saliva, breath – that had accompanied her working life. Now she was working for nothing, but where else would she rather be? There was another smell, too – something lemony. Whoever had been on duty the previous afternoon – Lesley, she thought – had spritzed the tables with spray polish, as well as hoovering the carpet. She looked at her watch. There was time to reshelve the books that stood waiting on the trolley before she opened up. She switched on the computer at the issues desk and took the trolley on its short tour of the little library.

  Then she went to turn the notice on the front door to Open and found Jack Terry waiting outside. She ushered him in, trying hard not to show her shock at the look of him. He had looked bad enough at Lily’s funeral, but his young face this morning seemed all bones and she thought he probably hadn’t shaved since then. He fished in the pocket of his parka and pulled out – the last thing she was expecting – a copy of The World’s Wife.

  ‘Returning Lily’s book,’ he said, holding it out to her. ‘I know you’re having a meeting tonight. It’s on our calendar.’

  The pathos of this – the picture of Lily’s writing on the calendar, her plans for the coming weeks neatly recorded – caught Lorna so sharply that she had to keep her head down as she reached out for the book, so that he would not see her sudden tears. She turned away from him and headed for the office. ‘Cup of coffee?’ she called over her shoulder. ‘I was just going to put the kettle on.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he protested, ‘there’s no need – I just, you know, brought the —’

  ‘Nonsense.’ She had her tear ducts under control now and turned back to face him. ‘If you’re working this morning, you can do with some coffee. It’s perishing out. Take one of the comfortable chairs over there. I won’t be a minute.’

  When she came back with coffee and biscuits, he was reading the local paper. Kelly’s death was not the lead story. This was a Dover-based paper, and the headline was about a Dover planning issue, but her story was on the front page, occupying a long column down the right-hand side, complete with a photo. Not knowing how to talk to Jack about Kelly’s death, which was a tragedy, but somehow nothing like Jack’s tragedy, Lorna busied herself with milk and sugar and pressing him to chocolate digestives. He was not up to small talk either, so they ate and drank in silence. Companionable silence, she reassured herself, but as soon as he had drained his coffee, he got up, mumbled thanks and shambled away, hands deep in his pockets. Lorna returned the tray to the office and put Lily’s book into its box, where it nestled beside hers, unread and unneeded.

  A trickle of library users arrived in the next half hour: two mothers with toddlers, who headed for the children’s section, an elderly man who regularly spent mornings in the reference section, a middle-aged woman wanting a session on one of the library’s two computers, and Simon Gates, who taught at the primary school next door and was picking up a new book on crustaceans, which he had ordered for use with his class of ten-year-olds.

  Then a young man arrived who, Lorna saw immediately, was not after library books. He did not look around, nor savour the atmosphere, but headed straight for her as she sat at the issues desk.

  ‘DC Aaron Green,’ he said, displaying a card. ‘Dover police.’ Lorna had stood up as he approached; now she sat down heavily. Don, she thought. It has to be Don. Car accident? Heart attack? She forced herself to speak. ‘My husband,’ she said. ‘Has something —?’

  He held up a hand. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Nothing like that. I’ve got a query about a book.’

  Lorna was not a woman who shouted but just for a moment she had a strong inclination to shout at him. This was a library, however, and there were readers in it. She kept her voice low.

  ‘A book?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ He looked around. ‘You are the librarian, are you?’

  She decided not to explain to him about the community-run status of the library and said instead, ‘I’m the person on duty at the moment.’

  ‘Right. Well what I need to know is whether you issued a certain book and if so who to.’

  ‘All right.’ She turned to the computer. ‘I’ll need the book. Or the barcode.’

  He looked startled. ‘The book’s evidence. I can’t carry it around with me.’

  ‘Evidence for what?’

  ‘This is in connection with the fatality on the beach here.’

  ‘This is to do with Kelly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And where does the book come in?’

  He looked around and then lowered his voice.

  ‘A county library book was found at the scene.’

  ‘Well, if you can get me the barcode, I can tell you if it’s one of ours and, if so, who we issued it to.’

  ‘What if I tell you the title?’

  ‘It’s highly unlikely that it’s the only one in any of the county’s libraries. What is the title?’

  He took out a notebook. ‘It’s a book of poems,’ he said. ‘It’s called —’

  ‘The World’s Wife,’ Lorna said.

  ‘You’ve been talking to Mrs Sidwell, haven’t you?’

  ‘To Gina? No.’

  ‘Then how—?’

  She stood up. ‘Come with me,’ she said.

  He followed her into the office, where she produced the county library box with the two books in it. She explained, briefly, about the book group and about reading group sets. ‘So the books aren’t issued individually,’ she explained. ‘I wouldn’t be able to tell you who had that book, even if I had the barcode. We had eight books issued to us this month. Tragically, we’ve lost two members, one in an accident and one – well, you know better than I do, I expect. The rest of the books will be returned at our meeting this evening.’

  He pointed to the books in the box. ‘So one of those books was Kelly Field’s’.

  ‘No. One of them belonged to Lily, the girl who died in an accident, and the other is mine.’

  ‘So the one on the beach would be Kelly’s?’

  ‘I suppose so. Though it’s hard to imagine why she would take a book onto the beach in the pouring rain, isn’t it?’

  ‘I shall need the names of the rest of the group. And I shall need to know from you if anyone fails to return their book this evening.’

  She took a piece of paper from a desk drawer and started writing. ‘I can tell you the roads people live in,’ she said, as she wrote, ‘but I haven’t got house numbers. And I’ve only got one or two phone numbers. We use email to arrange meetings.’

  He was not listening but looking at the box containing the two books. ‘Why does it say that on the top?’ he asked. ‘Brooms
tick Brigade?’

  ‘Oh, it’s the name of the group. It’s a sort of joke. We used to be called just boring St Martin’s Book Group, but Gina – the person who started the group – decided we should change it to The Broomstick Brigade because that’s what the men call us.’

  ‘Which men?’

  ‘The men in the pub. The old codgers who go in there every night. We used to go in for a drink after our meetings – all except our youngest member,’ she added, conscious that she was talking to a police officer. ‘We used to walk her home first and then go into the pub, and they didn’t much like it. At first they called us The Mothers’ Meeting or The Knitting Circle but then the landlord called us The Broomstick Brigade, and that was the one that stuck.’

  ‘Why? Why did they call you that?’

  ‘Oh, you know, a group of women getting together, saying they’re talking about books. Don’t believe a word of it. They must be up to something. Something dodgy going on. They didn’t mean it. It was just a dig at us, but it was annoying, so we stopped going in the end and we take it in turns to bring a couple of bottles of wine here.’

  She stood up and took the piece of paper to him. ‘These two,’ she said, ‘Gina Sidwell and Alice Gates, are neighbours, both in Overcliffe Cottages, down on the front. And Eva Majoros and Lesley Harper are neighbours, too, both in Marine Drive, but I don’t know the numbers. Then Theodora Karalis lives in Larkspur Close, and this is me, Lorna Dering, and my address.’

  He folded the paper and put it in his pocket, then gave her a card. ‘My number,’ he said. ‘Let me know right away if anyone doesn’t bring their book back.’

  ‘All right. But it will turn out to be Kelly’s book, won’t it? That’s the only thing that makes sense.’

  She watched him go, returned to the office and wondered about phoning Gina to tell her about this latest development. They had spoken briefly since Kelly’s death and agreed that this evening’s meeting had to go ahead. They would have to talk about the future of the group – six people were really too few. She was surprised to realise how important the survival of the group was to her, how much she had tied it to the survival of the library, how she depended on it to keep the place feeling busy. Her strategy of getting people to drop into the library to collect the next book for discussion, for example, instead of handing out the next set when the previous ones were returned, as most groups did, had meant seven extra people coming in, perhaps taking out other books, and the opportunity for a bit of book chat at the issues desk, making anyone else in the library feel that books were live things, to be thought about and talked about. She had even thought about getting a local author to come in and talk one evening. If everyone in the group could guarantee to bring one other person with them, and if they advertised it well, it would be an event, would give a buzz to the place. She wasn’t ready to give up. She needed Gina to be positive tonight, too. She phoned her number but her phone was switched off.