Suspicious Minds

by David Mark

  ‘What was that, mate?’

  ‘I’m saying, I bet you’ll be paying for the car.’

  ‘What makes you say that? Got a good job, our Belinda. Brings in a good wage. Bit presumptuous of you, if I’m honest.’

  Jay doesn’t notice the warning signs. He’s still high on pride. ‘Well, they do say that it’s the exception that proves the rule. Not sure I’d be lucky enough to find a partner who earns what I do. I know we’re not supposed to think it, but it’s hardly surprising that there aren’t as many woman once you get past middle management. It’s the temperament, isn’t it? I’m sure your wife is a grafter but even the best of them are too emotional to make the big decisions.’

  Brendon is smiling, looking at Jay as if he’s a funny YouTube video. He glances at Betsy. ‘Does he mean this, or is he practicing an act?’

  ‘Dad, not everybody thinks like you …’ begins Anya, urgently.

  Betsy takes a few steps forward and Brendon raises his hand. ‘You stay still, love. We’ll get to you. You and I have got to have a proper little chat about monies owed.’

  ‘Really, Liz?’ Jay looks at her and shakes his head, delighted with this nugget of information. ‘This quickly? Messed up good and proper, haven’t you? Anya, take a good look at what she chose over us. Look what happens when you think you’re better off on your own …’

  The man walks across to Jay in three brisk strides. Betsy sees what is about to happen before Jay even registers that he may have caused offence.

  ‘Jude’s money, is it … what we owe? Well, him, not me, but I guess we’re a couple so what’s his is mine and all that … I’ve been waiting …’ splutters Betsy, her voice loud. ‘I can sort that now, actually. Do you want a chat? I’ll just say goodbye to my friends here.’

  Brendon, the punch unthrown, his fist opening out like the teeth of a Venus flytrap. He looks to Betsy and the child who stands beside her. Something passes between them. He gives the faintest of nods.

  ‘You off, eh?’ he asks Jay, his face uncomfortably close. He’s shorter than Jay, but looks as though he could snap him over his knee. ‘Well, you drive safe. I’d move the van for you but it’s not great at hill starts so I’d carry on up the lane and down the track to the road. Bit bumpy but a car like that can handle it, eh? I’ve heard the suspension’s peachy.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ says Jay, a reedy nervousness suddenly bleeding into his voice. ‘Anya, come.’

  Betsy hugs her. Kisses her. Presses her face against hers and tells her to keep the daisy safe. She finds herself hoping that he really does see her again soon.

  ‘There’ll be a letter from my solicitor on its way,’ says Jay, in parting. He jerks his head, flares his nostrils, as some insect briefly troubles him. ‘I’ve been left with some debts that I don’t feel are my responsibility so I’ve given your details to the enforcement agents and you can expect a visit. Sorry to have pissed in your paradise.’ He moves to climb back into the car but can’t seem to resist one last sneering look at the bastle. ‘Suits you, this place. Gone to seed. Well past its prime. Looks interesting from the outside but rotten all the way through.’

  Brendon furrows his brow and looks at Jay from under dark eyebrows: a thumbprint crease opening up on his forehead. ‘Wow, mate, first impressions but you really do seem a prick.’

  Jay’s eyes widen. He seems about to reply and Betsy finds herself hoping that he does so; that he gets himself smacked insensible and that she gets to enjoy every kick and punch. But Anya would see too. And that simply can’t be allowed to happen.

  ‘Do you want to come around the back?’ asks Betsy, trying to keep her manner bright. ‘As the actress said to the bishop …’

  ‘Be seeing you,’ smiles the man, and gives Jay a friendly slap on the shoulder. He flinches as if ducking a rock, and Brendon lets out a peal of laughter as he follows Betsy to the gate.

  As she unloops the rope and pushes open the mossed-over wooden gate, she gives one last glimpse back at the track. Jay is revving his engine, his face white with embarrassment. She looks out across the valley imploringly, trying to fill it with the sound of a quad bike, the barking of Marshall; the broad-shouldered outline of Jude moving purposefully towards them. She sees nothing.

  She closes the gate. Drops the noose back around the fence post. Trudges around the angle of the house and into the cool of the overgrown, rubbish-strewn courtyard, her basket banging against her hip. She feels sick. Doesn’t know whether she has somehow succeeded in making things worse. Starts telling herself off. Hears the old voices, sneering, mocking, asking how she’s going to fix things now; what the hell she thinks she’s doing …

  He’d seemed OK, hadn’t he? Brendon. Stuck up for her? He’d thought Jay was a prick, and that had to count for something.

  ‘Shall we sit outside? It’s cold inside.’

  ‘Aye, I’ve been in. Like a mausoleum.’

  ‘Takes a lot of heating but glorious in summer.’

  ‘I can imagine. Hope it works out for you, love. I really do. Bit different to where you were when I brought you Candy’s money.’

  ‘Yes. Candy, you said? Not her husband.’

  ‘Big difference between the person who writes the cheque and the bank that cashes it.’

  Betsy watches as he pulls up a plastic seat and sits down, legs spread, and gives her what might be described as a kind smile. Then, almost apologetically, he pulls out a mobile phone from his inside pocket. ‘Here,’ he says, and tosses it, under-arm. She drops the basket. Catches the phone.

  A call is active. The screen shows that it has been listening in for the past ten minutes.

  She raises the phone to her ear.

  ‘Ms Zahavi,’ comes a voice. ‘My name’s Candy. I want to talk to you about Jude.’

  Betsy finds herself muttering something incomprehensible. She feels silly, and lost. She wants to run back to the woods and feel the forest close around her.

  ‘He’s really not what you think he is,’ says Candy, and her elongated vowels mark her out as somebody for whom money has rarely been a problem. It makes Betsy feel like a housemaid in contrast, as if she should be carrying a silver tray and dropping into curtseys; forbidden from eye contact with the owner of this rich, imperious voice.

  ‘I know exactly what he is,’ she replies, looking at Brendon, who gives a shrug of apology. ‘He’s what I want.’

  ‘Yes, well, he does make a good first impression.’

  ‘You don’t, love. You come across as a stuck-up cow.’

  The words surprise Betsy, who had not known she was about to speak until the words were already leaving her lips. She plays them back in her head. She suddenly knows, with absolute certainty, what he means to her. She’s not just in love with him – she’s addicted.

  ‘Maeve thought that,’ says Candy, with a soft laugh. ‘And Maeve’s dead.’

  ‘It was an accident – we’ve spoken about it …’

  ‘No,’ says Candy, flatly. ‘No, you haven’t. There are things you need to know. I’m trying to be a good neighbour. My husband’s staff have some very strong feelings about Jude and it is only by my good graces that they are resisting carrying out my husband’s instructions to the letter. I believe I am at the very least owed a reciprocal gesture. That gesture is half an hour of your time, and perhaps a glass of something refreshing. I will be at the Lord Crewe in Blanchland at three p.m. So will you.’

  Betsy doesn’t like the way she’s being spoken to. Her face twists in anger. ‘I will, will I? Look I don’t know what you think you’re doing but I know all about your little crush on my boyfriend and the way your prick of a husband has been trying to run him out of this place and I think it all sounds horribly ugly. I can give your man here a little cash as a gesture on Jude’s behalf until we sort something out long-term, a payment plan, or something, but as for becoming best buddies and meeting to compare Jude stories, you’re out of your mind. He’ll be back any moment––’

  ‘No he won’t. H
e has a job over at Whitley Chapel. He’ll be gone until this evening.’

  ‘No … no … you don’t get to know more than me about my boyfriend,’ spits Betsy, colour rising in her cheeks.

  ‘I know a great deal, Elizabeth,’ says Candy. ‘The Lord Crewe. Three p.m.’

  ‘You’re off your head, love,’ spits Betsy. She looks around her, gazing out across the valley; the rise and fall of stone walls, abandoned farms; the green-and-brown patchwork of land honeycombed with old mine workings. She feels a million miles from any kind of life she understands. ‘Anyway, how do I get there?’

  In the chair, the man raises his hands, palms up – a shrug that says ‘sorry – I’m under instructions’.

  ‘You’ll go with Brendon, of course,’ says Candy, sweetly. ‘And his friends. Rough gentlemen, but from what I’ve heard, that’s just what you’re in the market for.’

  The line goes dead.

  Betsy stands still, open-mouthed and furious. ‘You don’t think I’m really going with you?’ she asks Brendon, bending down to pick up her spilled flowers. She feels dizzy. Nauseous. She looks up, and he’s standing there, legs apart, towering over her; the sun obscuring his features.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Yeah, I do.’

  THIRTY

  Betsy is pushed up against the glass of the van; the man beside her stretching out his legs and pinning her against the door. She isn’t complaining out loud but on the inside she’s fantasizing about what she would do in the event of a sudden crash. He’s not wearing a seatbelt and she keeps picturing him going through the glass and skidding along the country road in a spray of pinks and reds and shattered bones. She likes the idea of sitting down, cross-legged, and watching him breathe his last; smiling as he begs, raspily, for her to go fetch help.

  ‘You been here before?’

  This from Brendon, at the wheel. He’s tried to engage her in conversation throughout the half-hour journey across the steep moors and winding, forested roads. She’s given him little in the way of acknowledgement.

  ‘Nice place,’ he says, cheerily. ‘You should get Punch to bring you here for a feed one night. They do cocktails. He’ll know that, of course. Very much a regular, though there aren’t many pubs around here that haven’t enjoyed his patronage from time to time.’

  ‘Fancy though,’ says the man beside her, nastily. ‘You need to dress up a bit. Can’t wander in any old how.’ He sniffs the air, theatrically. ‘Maybe a wash and brush-up, know what I’m saying?’

  Betsy changes her position so she can look at him properly. He’s got bad skin. Blackheads across his nose and something like a boil peeking out of his hairline.

  ‘I’d insult you back, but I’d tire before I ran out of things to say,’ says Betsy, flatly.

  In the driving seat, Brendon lets out a laugh. ‘Told you, Tench. Told you she was a livewire.’

  ‘You told me she threw herself at you,’ says Tench, nastily. He glares at Betsy. ‘Reckoned you were a cat on heat. That right, love? You a cat on heat? Bit of a slag, are you? Not happy unless you’re flattening grass or banging your head off a cistern in a disabled toilet, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know, Tench,’ says Betsy, looking at him with disdain. She’s not frightened of this one. Compared to the man she met at the pharmacy, he’s as intimidating as mince. ‘I do know that you have the look of somebody who spends a lot of time wanking into a sock.’

  ‘You’re a bitch,’ hisses Tench.

  ‘And you have a limited vocabulary, you spotty little twat.’

  ‘Here we are,’ says Brendon, as they emerge from a tunnel of tall trees and into an impossibly perfect village. ‘I’m sorry to say we’ve arrived at our destination. Shame. I was enjoying that.’

  Blanchland is every inch a filmset: a flickerpad of sturdy, honey-coloured cottages; matching red doors and elegant hanging baskets, all holding hands around the high, crenelated rectangle of the village pub. There are a few cars parked on what passes for the main street but they look like anachronisms in this setting. Horses should be tethered here; footmen in gleaming livery should be standing beside lacquered coaches; men with splendid whiskers should be sitting outside the alehouse, supping from pewter tankards and admiring the ankles of serving girls hurrying to the wash house.

  ‘Told you,’ says Brendon, to Betsy. ‘When you get home, tell him you like it here. Make a fuss. Pout a bit. Always works for my wife. Can’t say no, can I? She can wrap me around her little finger. Bet you can do the same with Punch, eh?’

  She flicks a hard stare at him as he manoeuvres into a parking space, tucked in between a Porsche Boxster and a Maserati. Betsy doesn’t know much about cars but she can tell what’s expensive. ‘Punch?’ she asks, tired of hearing the word.

  ‘Come on, love – Jude. Judy. Punch and …’

  ‘Oh. Right. Didn’t know he had a nickname.’

  ‘It’s not a nickname,’ says Tench. ‘You don’t say it to his face unless you want trouble.’

  Betsy shakes her head. ‘I don’t think that’s his problem with you, Tench,’ she says, staring out at the square. The glass is dusty and fly-smeared and turns the warm blue day into a view that is foggy and storm-laden. She reaches for the handle, eager to be out of the vehicle. She realizes she still has Tench’s attention. ‘He’s not some thug who just hits people for no reason. Any problems you’ve had with him are because you’ve brought them on yourself. He’s one man against all of you.’

  ‘Have you heard this?’ laughs Tench, addressing his comments to Brendon. ‘Poor old Punch, eh? Being picked on by the nasty men. Jesus, you’ve swallowed everything he’s fed you, haven’t you?’

  ‘How am I getting home?’ she asks Brendon, ignoring the man between them.

  ‘I reckon you can afford a taxi,’ he says, apologetically. ‘Whether you can get one is anybody’s guess. Anyhow, don’t keep her waiting. She’s inside.’

  Betsy realizes she’s being dismissed. She gives her nastiest smile and pushes open the door. It bangs against the panel of the Porsche. She turns back to Brendon, whose eyes are closed, shaking his head. ‘Soz,’ she says, and slams the door so hard she nearly falls with the effort.

  On the street, she stands still, considering her options. No phone. No purse. No way of contacting Jude. And inside the bar, a woman who fancies her man and wants to tell her all sorts of horrible things. She realizes that even if she should turn away from the pub and start walking away in the general direction of home, she would always regret not hearing her out. She has never been able to resist an impulse. Curiosity; a bloody-minded need to know, has been her prime motivator her whole life.

  ‘Bugger it,’ she mumbles, and crosses the road.

  There’s something distinctly forbidding about the door to The Crypt Bar. It’s a big, studded slab of oak set in an ancient stone archway. Betsy has to put her weight behind it, hampered by the dangling roots and creepers of the colossal hanging basket that droops down beneath the big metal sign, creaking like a gibbet. The cool of the old stonework enfolds her as she makes her way down the ancient steps and through another cloistered arch, emerging in a small, narrow bar. It’s a grand but comfortable space: stained-glass windows and high-backed wooden chairs made comfortable with squashy tweed cushions and woollen throws. At the bar, a trio of men in matching camouflage sup from chunky pint glasses; two gundogs asleep at their booted feet, trying to absorb some of the chill from the flagstones. Above, a wrought-iron hoop, the sort that should contain candles. Its likeness is reflected in the mirror behind the bar, almost obscured by the row upon row of high-class gins and mixers. Betsy fancies this is not the sort of pub that serves Carling, although she’s briefly encouraged by the sight of a huge jar of pickled eggs at the far end. She squints. Double-takes, disappointed as she realizes it’s just water, full of wedges of lemon and lime.

  ‘Ah, good, you survived.’

  Betsy spins in the direction of the voice. It takes an effort of will to keep herself from bursting out laughin
g. Candy is not at all what she had pictured. She had imagined a tall, swan-necked femme fatale: golden hair and pearls, costly breasts and teeth like sugar cubes; the sort who looks good testing the flex of a horsewhip and never feels like a tit when ordering Pimm’s. Betsy hasn’t prepared herself for the reality. The woman before her is pushing sixty and has the kind of rum-dark, sun-hardened skin that calls to mind disinterred mummies and bog bodies. Peperami, at a push. She’s grey; her hair a mess of jagged cuts and haphazard scissor-strokes: her fringe snipped back almost to the hairline. She wears a blue T-shirt, exposing strong, wiry arms, and her sturdy, weather-beaten legs stick out from faded shorts, roped with thick veins. She wears sturdy sandals; their soles thick with crusted mud. She’s drinking Guinness and there is a paperback novel, splayed at the spine, face down on the wooden table. She’s smiling, but if she covered the lower half of her face with her hand it would be impossible to tell her state of mind from looking at her eyes.

  ‘I would stand up but I’ve had a few and can’t find the energy to be unnecessarily courteous – I hope that doesn’t start us off on the wrong footing.’

  Betsy glances towards the men at the bar. They have the look of experienced eavesdroppers. If they’ve heard Candy’s opening gambit they aren’t going to spoil their afternoon’s entertainment by alerting her to the fact that her volume is set a good few notches above ‘discreet’.

  ‘I don’t think that’s what will sour it,’ says Betsy, her volume matching Candy’s. ‘I would ask if you want a drink but seeing as your blokes picked me up without even letting me get my purse, I guess this one’s on you.’

  Candy smiles, pleased with the riposte. She looks past her. ‘Freddie!’

  From behind the bar, a good-looking man with a shaved head and nice spectacles pops up like a jack-in-the-box. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he says, in a thick French accent. He looks rather smart in his collarless shirt and healthy tan. ‘Aha, my lady, my maharina, I did not hear the door – you walk like a ninja, yes – you wear rabbits on your toes, I think, yes, yes, yes …’