She turned on me, her eyes wild. ‘The house!’ Her voice was hoarse, as though she’d been screaming silently.
But they’d all abandoned it, ten years before. It’d since been stripped of everything, desecrated. The throbbing noise was now very close. I knew we should not be there. Nobody should. But she slipped from my grasp and ran into a side room. There was no window at all in there, and the mist invaded it.
We rushed to the gap. She grasped at the remains of the sill, leaning forward so that I thought she might fall out. ‘It’s gone!’ she moaned. ‘Next door. Another house. It’s gone.’
All her youth had been spent in this house, but she surely could not mourn it, from what she’d told me. She’d hated it, and had deserted it. But nevertheless, it was something of her life that had been snatched from her.
I saw it then, an indistinct and formless shape, hard and angular. But it was the shape belonging to the noise, and my brain put the two together. It emerged from the mist as I identified it, coming in from the left, heading for this house, for us. It was a huge, tractored digger with a shovel a mile wide, thrusting, lifting, turning and dumping.
Bella made a choked, screaming sound. With one quick thrust she threw herself from the window, landing on her knees. ‘Bella!’ I shouted, but my voice was a tiny sound, which was lost. I had to follow, jagging my slacks. She was stumbling through mud ahead of me, pushing forward towards the tractor. ‘No! No!’ she screamed. The driver couldn’t have heard her. She was waving her arms, but I doubted he would see her.
I caught her just before she went too far. The digger would have grabbed her with its next mouthful. Then at last he must have seen us. The tractor stopped, throbbing, the shovel high with its last grab, tilting, tilting its load towards our feet.
I dragged Bella backwards. The load tumbled and trundled in front of us, speading so that our feet were covered in the wet earth as it flowed. And as I watched the flow settle, a human skull rolled to the surface, grinning as it turned to face us.
Bella clamped her hands to her face and screamed and screamed. Slowly, I fell to my knees, nothing left in my legs at all.
Chapter 3
She lay on her bed, face down but rolling her body from side to side, whimpering and swearing and crying, beating the pillow with her fists.
For a while I stood and watched, then I became a little tired of it. What could she have expected, after ten years? That it’d all be there, pristine and fresh, awaiting her key in the lock? And she’d hated the place. For her, it had been a house of doom. There was the skull, of course, but I began to wonder whether she might have expected that, too.
So why all the fuss? It was overdone — hammed.
‘All right,’ I said eventually, forcing in the words between two bouts of sobs. ‘That’s enough, Bella. Enough.’
Her feet pounded on the bedcover in comment. No words.
I’d managed to get her back inside the Rover, after the first of the police had arrived. There’d been time for me to discover that the house next door had been the twin of Bella’s home, but had been empty even longer. It didn’t take a great stream of mental effort to understand what had happened. So we had to talk, Bella and I, serious and fast talk, before the police turned up. There was no time for hysteria.
It was the skull that’d sent her over the edge.
I sat on the side of her bed, talking quietly and seriously in a matter-of-fact voice, trying to strip it of drama.
‘You’ve got to realize you’re in difficulties, Bella. Listen! Stop moaning. It’s ridiculous. You’re in trouble, and all you can do is moan! There was suspicion of an illegal killing from the moment your father disappeared. Now they’ve unearthed a skull. Oh, for pity’s sake, it’s only a skull. Not a body. An inanimate object.’
‘Go to hell!’ But she was listening.
‘Where it was dug up, as far as they can tell, was where the foundations of the next-door house would’ve been. It looks as though it was a body buried in the ground beneath the floor-boards. Bella, the police are going to face you with this, and soon. Think. Listen, and stop moaning. Don’t you see, the fact that you and your sister disappeared two or three weeks after your father did is a suspicious circumstance. Now they’ve got evidence of a death. Positive evidence.’
She lifted her head and stared at me. She’d aged ten years in half an hour, but I knew it would all come back. But now her eyes were wild, and flickered from me, then back again. ‘Oh-oh!’ she moaned.
‘I expect you girls used to play in that empty house,’ I suggested. She put the corner of the sheet in her teeth and tugged at it. She’d abruptly shed twenty years. Remembering the playing, no doubt.
‘So the police’, I went on, ‘are going to suggest that you and your sister killed your father, knew you could lift a section of floor-boards in the empty house next door, so you buried him in the earth beneath.’
‘It’s a lie!’ she yelled, flinging the damp bit of sheet aside. ‘A friggin’ lie! We never. We never.’
‘And there’s also the coincidence, you see,’ I went on, ignoring her irrelevancies.
‘What soddin’ coincidence?’ She was still in her swearing mood.
‘That you should come here, after ten years of absence, just at the time the houses were due for demolition. You must have known, Bella. You must have heard . . been tipped off perhaps.’
‘No!’ she cried, jerking her head in dismissal. ‘No!’
‘Everything’s pointing straight at you, you foolish creature.’
‘No-o-o-o!’ she screamed, flinging her arms around and plunging about, nearly hitting me in the face.
I caught her wrists. She was still half-sprawled on the bed and I was now on my feet, so I had the stability advantage and could control her, sit her up, shake her, then lean closer for emphasis. Her teeth snapped at me.
‘Yes!’ I said into her face. ‘They’ve got a very good case against you.’
Her eyes held mine for a few moments and her lower lip quivered, then she clamped her hands over her face and was away again, weeping and whimpering like a child.
I stood back, my patience close to slipping its lead. ‘Now — there’s a grand sight for you! Where’s the hell’s Roma Felucci, our fiery and gutsy heroine? Don’t tell me you’re prostrated, and licked already. You’ve got to have an answer for them, Bella. Not a load of tears that wouldn’t help you one bit. Do you hear me? Get on your feet and fight back, or act it if you’ve got to. Get a hold on yourself and face the thing. You’re supposed to be an actress, I believe. Or is that all a fake? Is it all for real, and what you see is Bella Fields? If so, let’s have a look at her. Stop snivelling like a child and fight back, for Chrissake!’ I was shouting when I got to the end of it, and not acting one word of it.
But it seemed I’d got through to her. She came at me from the bed in one smooth and fast movement, hands flying, nails flashing. I’d been waiting for something like that, and caught her wrists in my hands again, and held her. I was the fitter, it seemed. Her red, swollen face was inches from mine. I laughed at her.
‘And if this performance is real,’ I said, allowing contempt to enter my voice, ‘and if you’re genuinely upset and near hysterical, then for heaven’s sake stop overdoing it. So far, I’ve never seen such a lousy performance. And you look terrible.’
Then she stared at me while her face crumpled, and I felt the tension go from her arms and the strength ease from her fingers, and we were in each other’s arms, both of us weeping, because, frankly, I was not a little shocked myself, not having had previous experience of rolling skulls.
Then she was calmer, and we sat facing each other on our respective beds. Shaking my head, I repeated, ‘It’s really the coincidence that’s the big snag, you know.’
‘They happen,’ she said miserably.
‘Certainly they do. But sometimes they’re prodded a little in this direction or that. Look at it — even if the houses were going to be demolished, there’d be n
othing in that to bring you all the way from New York. It’s as though you expected them to uncover a body. That’s what the police are going to say.’
‘Let ‘em say what they like.’ But there was no force in it. ‘They’d be saying it in an interrogation room. They could confiscate your passport. You —’
‘I’ve got to get back!’
‘In that case, the police’ll have to hear something convincing. Let’s have it now. Let’s hear how it sounds to me.’
Her eyes scanned my face wildly. Then they were still, with reason and understanding in them. She protruded her lower lip, swept a hand over her hair. ‘Why?’ she demanded.
I didn’t know what she meant. ‘You hair’s a mess.’
‘Why should I talk to you? You’re nothing in this. Why’re you sticking your nose in?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m interested. Involved, if you like.’
‘And if I don’t like?’
‘Then I’ll pack my things and leave,’ I assured her, rather too emphatically because it would be agony now to leave it behind me. ‘If the police would let me,’ I added, giving myself room to manoeuvre.
‘Why shouldn’t they?’ Her eyes weren’t leaving my face for a second, now.
‘Because I am involved, like it or not.’ I leaned forward, trying honesty, which is sometimes convincing. ‘I can’t say I think of you as a friend, Bella, because I don’t know you. It’s almost impossible to see the real you, behind all the pretence and deceit.’
Her eyes darkened. She looked away from me and plunged a hand for the bedside table and her cigarettes. ‘What the hell d’you mean — deceit?’
‘What else can it be, if you can’t stop acting when the cameras are switched off? I can’t see the genuine Bella. Heaven knows, I don’t seem to have come across her.’ In the fish and chip restaurant perhaps, in the pub, but that had been a former Bella, a younger one, before Roma Felucci.
She blew smoke at me, adopting the best form of defence and going on to the attack. ‘And what about you? Who are you? You walked into my life. Not my idea, that wasn’t. Yours. Pushing yourself on me. Who are you? A woman copper? Yeah, that’d fit. You act just like one, always asking questions. I’ve had enough of you, Philipa Lowe. What’s your interest? Go on, convince me. Isn’t that what you’re always saying?’
Because I didn’t understand my own interest, and because I felt I had to, when it was something subliminal and elusive, I got to my feet and walked around. I couldn’t concentrate when I was staring into her eyes. They troubled me.
‘Frankly, I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Sometimes something human shows through, and I could find myself liking you. Then it all gets lost, and I can’t feel anything but dislike. There’s a hardness. Oh yes, I told you to fight. But it’s not that sort of hardness. A callousness, say, or a complete selfishness. Yes, that could be it. As you say — I can’t see why I’m troubling with you.’
‘Now just you stop right there.’ There was an ominous note in her voice, a bite.
I turned on her angrily. ‘I’m a trained psychologist, Bella. I’ve spent my life probing people, to discover whether they fit the top executive positions they’re applying for. I had to try to ferret out their failings and weaknesses. I’m an expert, Bella. Don’t tell me to stop, just because you don’t want to face yourself.’
‘I’ve had enough of this. Get out of my room.’
‘It’s mine.’ I laughed at her expression. ‘I booked it, and I’m paying for it. Shall I help you to pack?’
She pouted, too lazy or too tired to make a greater effort. ‘I’m not having you saying… those things you said about me.’
‘Callous? Selfish? Damn it all… your father! You hated him. All right, so you did. But when he just disappeared, you didn’t care. As long as he’d gone. And your sister! You were close, devoted to each other, but when she went — did you care? Not one tittle, you didn’t. You didn’t even keep in touch… and yes, of course, she would know you’re Roma Felucci. But you didn’t keep in touch! If she ever tried, did you brush her off? Did you tell her to keep out of your life, as you’ve just told me? Have you got any genuine friends? Tell me that.’
She bounced to her feet and pounded the cigarette to extinction in the glass ash-tray. I thought she was going to throw it at me.
‘We kept in touch, damn you!’ she shouted.
‘Ah!’ I said, grinning at her. She had previously lied with casual expertise, so I didn’t trust her now.
‘She went to Ireland, when she left here. We arranged it. She went, with nothing but a shoulder bag. She phoned me from there, so I sent some of her stuff on. She said there’d been no trouble, so I followed. It was easy. We were together, me acting, she helping around. Later on, she was a continuity girl in the film. Jay got her that job, but I don’t think he realized she was my sister. She came to the States after I’d settled in, but she drifted away. West. Did some modelling. We kept in touch. Sort of.’
‘So it was she who tipped you off about the demolition?’
‘No… o… o.’ She said it on a rising inflexion, genuinely surprised that I should think that.
‘Then who?’
She hesitated, having previously denied it so firmly. ‘It was a man.’
‘A name?’
‘No. Just said, “They’re going to knock down the two houses.” And hung up.’
‘No clue? Local or distant? The voice?’
‘You can’t tell local calls from international ones, now. It could even have been from here. The call came to the studio.’
‘But you felt you had to come, because you knew there was something to find? To be uncovered, say.’
‘No.’ She turned away.
‘It’s so obvious, Bella. Don’t back out now. You must have known.’
Now it was I who was standing still, she pacing. Something of the genuine person was appearing. Her guard was down. ‘I guessed,’ she said at last. ‘We guessed. Use your imagination, Phil, if you’ve got any. My father was in a right tangle at that time… thirty or forty people after his guts —’
‘Oh… come on.’
‘It’s true. Quite apart from the husbands of women he’d been fooling around with ... there was the football pool swindle, you see.’
‘I’ve never done the pools. You’ll have to explain.’
‘He ran a syndicate. Thirty of his mates. They each gave him a pound a week, and he sent in a perm. You know, permutation. Any eight from fourteen, it was. I remember that. The same fourteen numbered on the coupon every week, so they all knew what their money was on. Here — do you know this? Dad told me.’ It was the first time I’d heard her use the affectionate ‘Dad’. Her eyes and her hair were now dancing with fun. ‘The chance of picking eight score draws, as they called them, if that was all there were that week, out of fifty-something matches, is twenty seven million to one. It can be worked out mathematically. Don’t ask me how. But you can see, with his perm giving them three thousand chances on the one coupon, it was still nine thousand to one against winning the big one.’
‘And so?’
‘He played the chances. He was always doing that. All his damned life he was playing chances.’ Again a flash of affection crept in. ‘So he played that one, and didn’t ever send in the coupons. Pocketed the money instead. Any small divvies that came up, he paid out of his pocket, but he was always well in hand. Then, one week, the Saturday before he disappeared, it came up. They got the only eight score draws that week. First dividend, and it was nearly one and a quarter million pounds! So there were thirty of his mates expecting about forty thousand when the cheque came — and he hadn’t sent in the coupon! Can you imagine what they’d do to him!’
I shuddered. ‘He’d certainly have to get out of town.’
‘Yes… but with nothing? You’re stupid, Philipa. D’you know that? We knew something nasty must have happened to him.’
Stupid? Perhaps, but not completely. ‘But — why the house next door?’
‘Me and Tonia, we’d been keeping out of the way. Hell — we weren’t going to be caught up in it! We’d both got work waiting for us. Bits, here and there. So we left his friends to do… to do what they liked with him, what they’d got to do, and the obvious place… the house next door… under the floor.’
‘They wouldn’t have to take him far,’ I agreed, somewhat distastefully. ‘And I can see why you girls wanted to get away. But Bella — why come back now?’
‘I had to know!’ she said curtly, dismissively.
‘All right. But why — if you found you couldn’t keep away — why didn’t you fly? Why the QE2?’
‘I hate flying.’
‘You hated coming here. The flying would take a back seat — wouldn’t be so scary,’ I amended, as it had sounded strange.
Then she gave a small, childish grin, almost of embarrassment. ‘If I had to come, I wanted to be not too early. Oh, Philipa, surely you can see that!’
Oh yes, I could understand that. I looked at her calculatingly. She was an actress, after all, and she’d succeeded in capturing my pity, if not my sympathy. And she could have been very much more clever than I’d thought.
‘But will the police believe you, Bella? That’s the point.’
‘Piff!’ she said, elegantly flipping a hand. ‘They can believe what they like.’
‘Now,’ I told her, ‘it’s you being silly. You can parade all your cuckolded husbands — lovely word, that — and your cheated pools syndicate, but the police are going to aim straight at you. Make no mistake. So don’t dismiss them —’
‘I haven’t done anything!’
‘And how long d’you think it’ll take you to convince them?’ Before she could answer, I glanced at my watch. ‘We can get some lunch in about an hour...’
‘If you think I could swallow a mouthful!’
‘… so I think I’ll pop along to the house and see how they’re getting on. Coming?’
‘What! Back there? Wild horses —’
‘Right. Then I’ll be back for lunch. Probably with Inspector Connaught tagging along.’
Bury Him Darkly Page 4
