by Alison Bruce
‘Yeah. Pretty much.’
‘But you didn’t tell us you that you’re homosexual.’
‘Yeah, I’m gay. I just don’t feel the need to announce it every time I’m introduced to anyone.’
‘Except it’s very relevant in this case.’
‘No, not really. I mean, Stefan’s the sort of bloke who’ll get an idea in his head, and that’ll be it. You can’t tell him he’s wrong. No point in trying.’
‘Does he know you’re gay?’
‘I guess. Everyone at the Celeste seems to have worked it out.’
‘But you’ve never had a relationship with Stefan?’
‘No way. Sometimes I’ve suggested he’s too homophobic to be totally straight, but it would take a lot more than that to make him my type. He races dirt bikes for a start.’
‘Did he mention Rachel when he attacked you?’
‘Yeah . . . or maybe not by name.’ Mule’s eyes half closed as he thought back. ‘No, not by name. It was one of those alpha-male Get your hands off my woman outbursts, something like Don’t touch what ain’t yours plus expletives, of course.’
Gully spoke next. ‘You’d have known Rachel since she started work at the Celeste?’
‘Yeah – and Stefan and Kimberly, of course.’
‘And could you notice any recent difference in Rachel’s relationship with Stefan?’
‘They were always volatile, but Rachel always insisted that no one knew him like she did. He had a “really sweet side”, or so she said, but Kim was worried. She herself had been through all kinds of shit with that Nick, reckoned it was only a matter of time before Stefan and Rachel would implode too.’
‘So you know Kimberly well?’
‘She’s bloody reserved, even for a Pom, but we’d talk sometimes. You know we share the same stall at the craft market, right? We do alternate Sundays, because it gives her more time with Riley that way. Means we don’t see much of each other, but we get to chat every week.’
‘What do you paint?’
‘Heels, uppers, whatever – but I design the whole thing, too.’ To demonstrate, Mule flipped open the nearest box and lifted out a gold shoe with a Perspex wedge heel. A series of tiny Mardi Gras masks had been painted in a ribbon that curved from the toe and around to the back of the heel. ‘Primarily, my customers are drag or burlesque acts.’
‘You design shoes?’ Gully asked, as though seeing the opened box hadn’t been evidence enough for her.
‘That’s why they call me Mule.’
‘Oh,’ Gully mumbled, with just the hint of a smirk in her eye.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Marks wasn’t the only person at the Parkside Hotel who was keeping a close watch on the time, for amongst the gathering press pack stood the robust figure of Bev Dransfield. Aged forty-three, with twenty-one years’ reporting experience under her ever expanding belt. She liked to think her coverage of news was efficient, but her specialty was sport. She felt passionate about everything from football and cricket to Formula One and the annual boat race, but her specialty was horse racing.
Throughout the year the racing fixtures gave her enough stories to fill a whole edition of the Daily Star, and she’d carved out her niche so distinctly that it was rare for her to be expected to cover anything appearing in the front two-thirds of the newspaper.
Rare and, to her, unwelcome.
She’d been hammering up the M11 towards the Newmarket race meet when details of the press conference had come in, and therefore she’d landed it for no other reason than her editor noticing she was already in the area and deciding that a female take on the story would work better. And where was a serious-minded, non-pregnant co-worker when needed? She soon discovered there was no one available for her to dump this on. And why the editor, Barry, had thrown it at her rather than one of those family-minded ‘new men’ in the department was anyone’s guess.
Barry was taking the piss, that was for sure. Bev never had kids, never would, so she was sure that Kimberly Guyver’s take on being female would have been shaped by radically different experiences to her own.
Her first job as junior reporter had landed her with the nickname ‘Geezer Girl’, more recently shortened to Geez. She had seen first hand that some people had doors opened in their path, while others got them slammed in their faces. Through her own career she’d had to earn every success.
Bev had felt the injustice of being judged every time she’d been hit by the door handle of bigotry, but in this case it was a dead cert that no one had ever pinned the dyke badge on Kimberly Guyver, or complained that she didn’t project the ‘right image for the company’.
Once it became clear that the conference was delayed, Bev slipped outside to phone her editor. The call was routed straight to his mailbox. ‘It’s been delayed until three,’ she informed him. ‘My entire bloody day’s down the pan thanks to this.’ She ended the call, and was about to phone back into the newsroom and get swapped to another assignment, when she happened to spot her Peugeot. She’d taken one of the parking spaces closest to the hotel, and her car was now trapped behind two other rows of vehicles. If Anglia TV’s outside broadcast unit had got any closer it would have looked indecent.
There wasn’t even room to open her car’s doors. In fact the only open doors available were inviting her back into the hotel. So what if this was the ‘hot’ story of the week, or even the month, she really didn’t give a shit. The fact was she’d been stuck here since noon, and would now be unlikely to get back out again before the end of the rush hour.
‘Fuck.’
She opened a new pack of Benson & Hedges. The passenger window of the OB unit had been left open by an inch and she pushed the empty cellophane wrapper through it, then crossed to the perimeter wall and sat with her feet on someone else’s front bumper and her back to the sun. She smoked two cigarettes in quick succession, aware that, even if she was going back into the press conference, she still had almost an hour to kill. She tried to buoy herself up with the thought that this delay might signal a major development, but even that prospect failed to ignite any of her dampened journalistic curiosity.
She lit cigarette number three, then tuned in to the radio via her mobile phone. Any sport would do but, just as she found the tennis, her mobile rang.
She was tempted to ignore it but pressed the OK button instead. ‘Hi, Barry.’
‘Have you left yet?’
‘No chance. I’m blocked in by a sodding TV crew. Bastards.’
‘Good. Listen, here’s something to chase.’
‘What now?’
‘Jeez, Geez,’ – he loved saying that – ‘get your arse off of whatever you’re slouched on, and listen. I’ve had a call – seems that a nurse at Hinton Avenue nursing home has a theory. She reckons the kid shown in the picture’s not the same one that comes in to see Jay Andrews.’
Bev scowled. ‘Whose kid does the mother take in there, then?’
‘No, wrong way round. The kid she takes in is the one that’s missing. It’s the photo that’s wrong.’
Bev dropped the rest of the cigarette and left it smouldering in the dust. ‘Is the nurse sure?’
‘The kid is only three, so looks like a thousand other kids unless you know him. No one else questioned it, so the woman’s doubting it herself. Partly why she had a quiet word with us before embarrassing herself with the police. Our good luck, then, so don’t waste it.’
Bev hung up. It took a lot to make her discard a perfectly good cigarette. Usually only a major sporting upset could achieve that.
And to her this now felt like a kind of sport.
THIRTY-EIGHT
On the way back to the station, Gully asked him if he would now try to find Marks. But in Goodhew’s opinion there was little new to tell their DI, and certainly not enough to drag him away from a press conference. The only reason Goodhew might want to be over there was to talk to Kimberly but, as long as Marks was staying cheek-to-jowl with her, he didn’t see what could be
gained.
‘I’ll type up some reports until Marks comes back,’ he said.
Goodhew and Gully parted wordlessly at the station entrance. She headed straight for the canteen which reminded Goodhew that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He followed, saw her take a tray and order a hot meal, while he himself grabbed a sandwich to go. She was still being served as he turned to leave. Gully glanced at him, then looked away, but he saw a pink glow rising in her cheeks. He’d already worked out that she blushed a lot. Anything and everything seemed to set it off, but once or twice there had been no such reaction at moments when he might have expected one, so he guessed it was triggered at those times when she felt most self-conscious.
Gully’s eyes were dark-brown and framed by long dark lashes and, although her build was far from slight, her face had a doll-like quality, a little like Clara Bow or one of her silent-movie contemporaries. It gave the impression that she might be vulnerable and uncertain.
But he was now sure that, once she settled in properly at Parkside Police Station, that was the last thing she’d be. She’d been quick to judge him, and seemed determined to keep up a cold wall of suspicion between them, yet between the bricks he’d seen flashes of both compassion and humour. Despite her accusations, he couldn’t help liking her.
He switched his attention to the sandwich he’d chosen, turkey and cranberry sauce. It seemed a weird thing for the canteen to be serving in June. Egg mayo appealed to him more, but the salt and vinegar crisps were sold out, and in his opinion egg mayo without salt and vinegar crisps just didn’t work.
He broke open the packaging and started munching the first sandwich as he headed up the stairs. He hadn’t been lying to Gully about typing up some reports, but, as he debated where to start, and how to explain discovering that Mule was gay without involving Bryn, he ran through the mechanics of the case. He had no sense of progress being made, more like an ever-increasing number of loose strands that seemed to be spinning into a stagnant cocoon.
The need to ensure Riley’s safety was, of course, everything, and Goodhew tried hard not to dwell on any outcome but a positive one. He was also aware that in the corner of his mind’s eye there constantly lay an image of Riley’s small and unmoving body. Each time his thoughts had taken him close enough to it, he’d felt his skin prickle with cold sweat and his stomach lurch with fear.
And, each time, he would push those thoughts away again, knowing he needed to work with facts and logic alone.
And there were plenty of facts, no doubt with some lies hidden between, but they all seemed too disparate and he doubted that enough of relevance had yet emerged for logic to make any impact.
He reminded himself that Marks had the big picture, and that he himself saw only the précis. Maybe they already had all they needed, or maybe they weren’t looking at the information from the right angle.
He hesitated at the second-floor landing and closed his eyes for a moment. As he reopened them, his grandfather sprang into his memory. Goodhew turned to take the next flight up to the third, and top, floor.
There was a quiet corner up there, five-feet square and useless in everyone else’s eyes. It contained nothing but an old desk with a broken printer, and a couple of defunct desktop computers stowed beneath it.
The narrow side of the desk faced the window, so he sat with his back to the wall and his feet flat on the desktop, and clasped his hands around his knees. He was facing Parker’s Piece, an expanse of grass interrupted by two footpaths which crossed it diagonally, meeting in the centre at a spot marked by an old lamppost known locally as Reality Checkpoint. To the left lay the Parkside Hotel and the swimming pool, but he looked only in the opposite direction and stared across at the building that housed his flat.
That’s where he’d just remembered his grandfather, in the same pose as Goodhew himself was now sitting. Goodhew tried to remember how old the man had been but couldn’t be sure. His grandfather had died shortly before Goodhew’s twelfth birthday, and this mental picture came from sometime before that. So he guessed it might have been fifteen years ago.
His grandparents had owned the whole building then, a huge four-storey town house with a basement. It was still huge, of course, but Goodhew himself only occupied the small flat at the top, and never understood why they had needed so much space.
He’d often gone to visit his grandfather on the way home from school; it kept him away from his parents’ daily fights for the longest possible time. On this particular day he had encountered his grandmother first. She stood on the front step like she was waiting for him. She held an empty mug by its handle, supporting it underneath with her other hand, as though she hadn’t even noticed she’d drunk it all. Her eyes were sad and she pressed her lips tight, like she didn’t have words to express how she felt.
He ran up the steps and instinctively buried his face in her shoulder, whereupon she planted a gentle kiss in his hair. This was a gesture he usually felt too grown-up for in public but, at that moment, comforting her seemed to be all that mattered.
‘Is Granddad OK?’ he had asked anxiously.
‘He’s fine.’ She sat down beside him on the step, and gave him a reassuring hug. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, but he’s fine. Someone broke into the house and they’ve made a mess. It was a bit of a shock, but we’re both fine, and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?’
And, naïvely he had nodded, because when you’re a kid you believe that’s the truth of it. ‘Did the police come?’ he asked, after a moment.
‘They’ve finished.’
‘They did fingerprints?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry you missed that part.’
‘Me too.’
She then nudged him off the step. ‘Go and find Granddad. I’ll be in soon.’
He ran into the house, then stopped in his tracks. This was no minor break-in, he saw. Pictures lay smashed on the hall floor, and the plum-coloured carpet had been savagely hacked at, leaving two great rips running down its entire length. He went as far as the open doorway of the drawing room and halted on the threshold, transfixed by the destruction beyond. Nothing had been left intact: ornaments had been smashed, curtains ripped down, the family photos gouged. Someone had even pissed on the sofa. He turned away in shock, feeling that it would have been better to have stolen everything and left the place empty.
He had mounted the stairs, guessing he’d find his grandfather up on the second floor where he kept all his books and papers. The same devastation could be seen through each doorway he passed, and even his grandfather’s library hadn’t escaped. He examined it first through the gap that ran between the hinges, and gasped in disbelief. Scattered across the floor were thousands of pages, each torn from one of the many first editions that now lay in a broken pile beneath the smashed doors of the largest bookcase.
His grandfather sat on the floor with his back to the wall and his head buried in his hands. For a moment Goodhew thought the man was crying, so stayed where he was and didn’t move. This was private, and he had no right to be there, but the boy found he couldn’t look away either.
Finally his grandfather drew a breath and gazed straight through the gap between the door and its frame. ‘It’s OK, Gary, you can come in.’
Goodhew was carrying his schoolbag and felt like he didn’t dare put it down, just in the same way he wouldn’t do so in an unfamiliar or over-tidy house, so he sat down cross-legged on the floor with it still on his lap. He didn’t know what to say: this was too far beyond his experience. He looked to his grandfather for a cue, and for the first time registered that the man’s face showed no visible sign of distress.
They probably stayed silent like that for a while, or that’s how it seemed then.
‘Who would do this, Granddad?’ he began eventually.
‘No idea.’
‘You must be really, really mad with them.’
When his grandfather spoke, there was no anger in his voice. ‘Of course, I’m upset, Gary, and I don�
�t want you to think that this doesn’t matter to me, but I’m trying to concentrate on the solution. Do you know why?’
Goodhew shook his head.’
‘Because the solution is usually more important than the problem.’
‘That doesn’t make sense. Everything’s broken.’
‘And I can’t unbreak it, can I?’
‘No, but I don’t get it: how do you find a solution to this? And why did they have to do it?’
‘I don’t know, Gary. But all we can ever do is go forwards – do you see that?’
‘You mean we can’t go back in time? Of course, I understand.’
‘If I’d been here, it might not have happened, but I have to accept that I wasn’t here, or if I had been here it might have been worse.’ Goodhew’s grandfather’s explanation was patient. ‘None of those thoughts will clear up this mess or stop it happening again.’
Goodhew listened carefully, somehow understanding that he was being given words of wisdom that would serve him well at some other time.
‘You will have times in your life when you don’t know what to do next, when the problem seems so large or complex that it fills your entire head, and there’s no room left for a solution. Do you know what I do then?’
Goodhew shook his head but didn’t speak.
‘I find somewhere quiet and I sit there alone, just like I was when you came in, and wait until the problem thinks I’ve gone away, then . . .’ He clapped his hands in front of Goodhew’s face, making him jump. ‘Then I creep up behind it with the solution.’ He grinned and his eyes sparkled with devilry.
‘And that works?’
‘More often than you’d think, Gary.’
‘This time, too?’
‘Absolutely. It will take more than a burglary to ruin this home, you watch.’
And he was right.
Looking back, he knew that his grandparents must have been hit severely by the usual feelings of loss, violation and fear, but neither of them ever spoke of those things. Despite the changed locks, the wrecked carpets and the irreplaceable books, Goodhew’s grandfather made sure the most important lesson learnt came in those minutes the two of them shared ankle-deep in debris.
