The Smog (A Jean Clarke Mystery Book 1)

by Timothy Allsop

  She took their advice and went to her bed. The mattress was quickly transformed into something sexless, a peculiar nest in which her body was incubated but her mind was left to wander deliriously through all kinds of terrible scenarios. Her flesh felt treacherous. Every day she waited for the miscarriage and she taught herself to pray although she had no faith. A silent war erupted between her and Frank over possession of the unborn child. He would ask her several times a day how she was feeling and all she would give him by way of answer would be a nod of her head. When she felt the first kicks she did not tell him. Whenever he was in the room he would fuss over her and tell her to lie down with her legs up on a pillow and make her eat food she did not want to eat. The whole course of the pregnancy became unduly mechanised, to the point where the doctor prescribed her sedatives at Frank’s request. It was seven months in before she finally realized what she had done. She had allowed herself to be taken over both physically and mentally, as though her hormones had conspired with Frank, her parents and the countless men and women who, over many years, had worn away her self-worth by dismissing her entirely because she was plain and all that disregard had coalesced to convince her that she should have this child because it would make her feel like a proper woman, and yet she now questioned whether she wanted to be a mother at all.

  *

  Jean heard the front door open. Harry was home. She pulled off the dress, put it back on its hanger and replaced her own clothes. Harry did not come upstairs and yet he must have known that she was home because all the lights were on. She went downstairs and found him in the kitchen throwing up into the sink. He was cold to the bone and shaking wildly.

  ‘My God, what happened to you?’

  He turned the tap hard so that water gushed into the sink and washed away all the regurgitated scotch and then bending over he concentrated on sucking up the water into his mouth.

  ‘I drank too much,’ he said, soaking the cuff on his sleeve as he tried to turn off the tap. ‘Is the door shut? I swear I heard someone following me.’

  ‘It’s shut.’

  ‘Will you check, please?’ Harry said.

  Jean went to the front door. It was shut. She returned to the kitchen and rubbed Harry’s back while he was sick a second time. When his body had purged itself of all the alcohol it could, she removed his jacket, made him drink plenty of water and then helped him up the stairs, but halfway up he turned round.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said and pushed his way by her and down into the living room.

  ‘Harry, you need to go to bed,’ she said, following him.

  Harry had the drawers of the bureau open and was shifting all the papers that only a few minutes earlier Jean had been thumbing through. Jean felt her heart pounding in her head, suspecting that Harry would discover someone had been moving his things about, but he was entirely focused on finding something, pushing his hand to the back of the drawer and then pulling it out completely.

  ‘Damn it.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Jean said.

  Harry looked up helplessly and then returned the drawer.

  ‘I want to sleep until the world is over.’

  She practically lifted him upstairs. He cursed and swore to himself that he would never touch another drop of scotch as long as he lived.

  ‘I need to sort my head out,’ Harry said. ‘I can’t think straight about anything.’

  ‘What are you going on about?’

  ‘Befuddled. Everything’s smudged.

  ‘You just need to sleep.’

  ‘I’m a decent man, aren’t I Jean? I go out and work and don’t live extravagantly. In most things I’m very moderate.’

  ‘Except in drink.’

  ‘Any luck?’ he managed to ask, as Jean helped to remove his shoes.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘It was odd, but the café said they had no-one of Phyllis’s name working there.’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘It was run by a woman, who I thought was an Italian, but it turns out that she’s from Malta,’ Jean continued.

  ‘Why would she lie about the café?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it got me thinking about that fellow you bumped into at the theatre.’

  ‘What fellow?’

  ‘Well you said he was an Italian, but that seems too much of a coincidence, don’t you think? I can’t imagine that this city is overrun with Italian immigrants and perhaps you could have been mistaken. Perhaps he was Maltese and perhaps Phyllis knew him.’

  ‘Well, Phyllis knew a couple of American men but I don’t ever remember her introducing me to anyone from the continent. I suppose it might be possible. You think she might be having an affair with the fellow from the theatre?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s it. But there was something about the café that didn’t feel right.’

  Harry looked blankly at the bed covers.

  ‘And you?’ Jean asked, choosing not to mention Charlie.

  Harry shook his head.

  ‘Jean, I think it is best you head home. We should let the police get on with their job. There’s no good looking for her in this weather,’ he said, trying to remove his socks.

  ‘I really don’t mind being here,’ Jean answered.

  ‘No. I mean it. You shouldn’t worry yourself.’

  ‘What was Phyllis’s maiden name again?’

  ‘Brown,’ he said. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I showed the people at the café her photo and I do believe they recognized her, but they didn’t recognize the name Clarke.’

  ‘Perhaps she was working there under a different name.’

  ‘But why would she do that?’ Jean persisted.

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps they don’t like married women working there. Some people are still old fashioned like that,’ he said and collapsed against the pillow. ‘Look, I’ll sort it out. You don’t need to worry about it anymore.’

  ‘But I want to help.’

  ‘You should go and sort out your problems with Frank and let me deal with mine,’ Harry said firmly, trying to sit up in the bed. ‘I know things have been difficult but really you ought to talk it out with him. You’ve been married to him long enough to owe him that.’

  Jean tried to speak, feeling her cheeks redden but she couldn’t believe that her brother would say such a thing.

  ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she said, getting up from the edge of the bed, ‘absolutely no idea.’

  She walked out, switching off the light as she went. She was only half way down the stairs before she felt the childishness of her actions, but she kept going, in no mood to be apologetic, especially with her inebriated brother whose drunken arrogance reminded her of Frank. She opened the front door and looked at the dense fog in front of her, the cold primordial air promising nothing and she shut the door again, a feeling of defeat arising from deep within her.

  Jean went into the living room and paced about, plucking books off Harry’s shelves, gazing at the covers without really taking notice of the titles. She found a collection of magazines and papers stacked next to the bureau and leafed through them. One was a souvenir copy of the Festival of Britain, and the image of the futuristic Skylon thrusting itself into a blue sky made Jean long for escape. She remembered hearing about the festival on the news and telling Frank that she wanted to go but he had been dismissive of it, saying that it was just a parade of fantasies for wishful thinkers with no money. Frank had never been a fan of public endeavours and could not understand the function of museums or theatres and had nearly been apoplectic when the National Health Service was introduced. She turned the pages until she came to a photograph of Churchill, Macmillan and Herbert Morrison all sitting outside the Festival Hall on its opening day. Her eyes lingered on the picture. Churchill was sat forward on his seat, doing his best to look happy and involved, but to Jean he felt out of place. He was part of the wartime and he should have been sealed up with it after V.E. day. Every line
in his face bore some imprint of all the pain they had suffered as a country; his furrowed brow was a series of battle lines, his every look, handshake and turn of his head was a reminder of the anguish. He had absorbed all that near past and while he had survived, it no longer seemed enough to Jean that Britain had merely endured. She felt desperately the need to live and on her own terms.

  Harry did not come down. She presumed he had passed out. Best to let him sleep it off, she thought. She cleaned out the fire, relit it and then turned off all the lights in the apartment and sank into one of the grey armchairs. Her need for darkness was overwhelming. She let her head fall back against the chair and listened. All she could hear was the gentle ticking of a clock, but its regular rhythm was lost amongst the uneven crackling of the firewood as it burned. Tiredness began to work into her eyes. As she passed in and out of sleep she saw Charlie, and they were back in the café and she could see his fingers as they moved across the table-top. She dreamt of them undressing her, of them pulling at the buttons of her blouse, of his hand sliding down her torso and along her breasts. She was lost in images of the city and of the night and it made her feel hungry with desire, the darkness embalming her with atavistic thoughts. For a moment she and Charlie were standing opposite each other naked and then she was in his van, in his bed, although it wasn’t his bed but a kind of amalgamation of her brother’s bed and the bed in the spare room of Charlie’s house. And then she imagined that Phyllis was watching them, shouting out Charlie’s name, but that he could not hear her. The dream smudged and she found herself walking through a warehouse, a place unknown to her except in sleep, but in her mind it opened up in front of her as familiar and easy to navigate as her own house. She walked along and as she moved, the rooms through which she passed fell away, so that like an amnesiac there was no memory of them. She walked down a staircase and occasionally she felt a presence, the sense that someone was just off to one side or behind her at her shoulder, but in the dream she was unable to turn. At the bottom of the stairs was a blackened oak door, peeled from where it had been burned. She wanted to turn away but her hand reached out and pushed open the door and she emerged into a small chapel with two tiny coffins laid out on a shelf. In each coffin were two large glass jars filled with fluid. The door slammed shut behind her and she spun around but as she did she heard the sound of smashing glass.

  She awoke with a start, knowing that something was wrong and glanced to the fireplace which was dark save all but the smallest winking embers. She could feel a blast of cold air and something moving by the window. She stood up and moved towards it and then something crunched under her shoe. Looking down she saw broken glass under her toe and in the moment of registering it as glass, she could see it all over the floor in front of the curtains.

  Harry came thudding down the stairs.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said, switching on the light.

  They both stood looking at the mess of broken glass on the carpet, not understanding at first because they were still half asleep and their brains could only conceive a smashed bottle of wine and yet they had drunk no wine, but then they both saw the brick lying in the middle of the room. Someone had thrown it through the window. Jean went straight to the front door, opened it and looked out. She could not see anyone but she felt as though someone was standing on the street, looking back at her.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she shouted.

  ‘Don’t provoke them.’

  She shouted a second time.

  ‘Come in,’ Harry said, pulling at her arm. ‘Come in and we’ll call the police.’

  Harry frantically brought her in, shut the door and locked it. He couldn’t bring himself to go back into the living room. The cold air and the reality of the broken glass were too much for him.

  ‘Phone the police,’ Harry said, shaking. ‘I don’t care anymore. I want this to be over.’

  ‘All right,’ Jean said. ‘It’ll be all right.’

  Jean noticed that she too was shaking as she picked up the receiver and dialled for the police. It took a while before she was put through but she spoke with an officer who said they would send someone as soon as possible, although at present the weather had put them at full stretch. Jean took Harry back to his bed and then, taking a towel from the bathroom, she went back to the living room and tried as best she could do pack the towel into the hole. She wanted to clear up the glass but stopped herself, thinking that she should wait until the police had come. Instead she went through to the kitchen and made a hot tea for Harry and herself, returning to his bedroom, where she perched on his bed.

  ‘Harry, are you going to be honest with me?’ she said, looking over at the wardrobe.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Phyllis doesn’t live here, does she?’

  Harry looked down at his tea.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I mean what I say. She doesn’t live here. She hasn’t lived here for a long time from what I can see.’

  ‘From what you can see?’

  Jean went over to the wardrobe and opened it.

  ‘I didn’t mean to snoop. I was looking for a blanket to keep me warm but a woman needs more than a couple of summer garments in the middle of winter. Where are all of her belongings? Everything I can see in this place belongs to you.’

  She looked at him severely, questioning, and Harry found it difficult to look at her properly. As far as he was concerned this woman bore no resemblance to the person he thought of as his sister and her sudden show of strength now encouraged a desire to be honest with her, but it felt a precarious business engaging in the truth.

  ‘She used to live here. Well, she still stays here some of the time.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Harry hesitated.

  ‘Our marriage has been fine. It’s just since she’s been pregnant things have become complicated.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We have our own lives. We were very clear with each other when we were married that we would like to keep our independence as much as possible. It was a mutual agreement. Nothing explicitly stated, but we just found certain routines that worked for us. It was as much her decision as it was mine. I need you to understand that. For the last seven or eight weeks she’s been staying with two friends of ours and sleeping here a night or two a week, but after the night at the theatre I went to check and she never went home to our friends’ place. They are as worried as I am.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What do you mean routines?’

  ‘I can’t really explain it. A sort of commitment not to commit, but then it’s not like that either really. I don’t know.’

  ‘So she is sleeping with someone else?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘And you?’

  Harry felt his face reddening.

  ‘I have never had anyone stay here,’ he answered.

  ‘What kind of answer is that?’

  ‘I have not been unfaithful to her.’

  ‘And who are these friends?’

  ‘They’re called Michael and Joe.’

  ‘How do you know they’re telling the truth?’

  ‘I just know. They are at their wits end and now this. It’s something serious.’

  ‘Which is why we need to find her.’

  Harry wanted to stop talking, but he supposed it was best to tell her about the three men who attacked him. Jean listened as he explained, although he was careful to omit George from the narrative and when he had finished he did feel measurably better.

  ‘You should have phoned the police straight away.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Harry said. ‘I just hate the way they go digging into everything.’

  ‘You should tell them about the men and these two fellows, Michael and Joe.’

  ‘We can’t do that,’ Harry said, shaking his head. ‘We can’t get the police onto them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they would tell me if they
knew anything.’

  ‘That’s not an answer.’

  ‘We have no right to cause them trouble. They are very private people and the police would only go snooping into their business and they really don’t deserve that. If they knew where Phyllis was, they’d tell me,’ Harry said, now wondering if his faith in them was justified.

  ‘I’d like to meet them all the same,’ Jean said. ‘First thing in the morning.’

  Harry was troubled by the mess of it all. He laid back, his head turning over the whole business.

  ‘All right,’ he answered eventually.

  ‘And Harry,’ Jean said, tentatively, ‘the baby is yours, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ he replied quickly.

  Jean nodded, sat down on the edge of the bed and peered down at the brown tea in her cup, which she could feel had already gone cold.

  ‘While we’re being so frank with one another perhaps you could enlighten me as to what is going on with you and your husband,’ Harry said, lingering on the word frank.

  Jean knew this would happen. Honesty could only ever be paid for with the like, but a little concession wouldn’t hurt and it would perhaps encourage her brother to talk more.

  ‘We had a fight. Or rather I had the fight. The last few weeks have been impossibly hard and Frank doesn’t understand. That’s all I have to say on the subject. You can figure out the rest for yourself.’

  With that the two siblings realized they were stuck at an impasse with neither willing to concede more of themselves. Harry attempted to sleep but he felt on the edge of a panic attack, his stomach tight and heavy and his jaw locked. He did not feel any better after the police sergeant had come to look at the damage. Reluctantly he told them about the men and explained once more about Phyllis’s disappearance. The sergeant nodded and said that a police detective would be over the next morning.