by Liz Evans
That was the first indication I had that we weren’t just following the route, we were delivering the papers too.
‘Why?’ I asked once we were back outside.
‘Because I’m fresh out of ideas and this might turn up something. Pedals up pretty friend, and let’s ride.’
He hauled the paper sack across his shoulder and sped back the way we’d just come along the sea-front road, swooping inland in a right turn just as we reached the unofficial border between Seatoun and West Bay. I followed him to an older, narrow red-brick house that was very similar to the one Clemency Courtney had just bought. ‘This was her first delivery.’ He handed me a copy of the Daily Mail.
I trudged up the path and tried to push it through the letterbox. It was way too fat and got caught. Hauling it out, I squeezed it flatter and tried again. The door was ripped open and I nearly fell into a well-cushioned stomach. ‘What you doing?’
‘Paper delivery.’
‘We don’t have no papers.’
‘It’s a freebie.’
He hauled the mangled pages from his letterbox and glared. ‘I don’t read this rubbish. You got the Sun?’
‘No.’
The newspaper sailed past me as I reached the gate.
‘Our first satisfied customer,’ O’Hara remarked, retrieving the mess and putting it back in the sack.
‘Are you planning to go through this routine at every single house?’
‘I am. Is that a problem?’
‘Not as long as you keep paying for my time.’
In theory, Heidi’s route seemed like a ten-minute bike ride. Once you added in the too-thick papers and magazines, inaccessible and/or too stiff letterboxes, and multi-tenanted houses where you had to ring the bell and wait before you could get inside, it became obvious that an hour and a quarter was a reasonable time to reach the end of the round at River End.
It was a half a mile inland, along the main road from West Bay, and hardly rated its own name. The whole hamlet consisted of seven houses: one larger old house sitting square in the middle of its own garden, a row of three brick cottages that had probably been tied farmworkers’ homes at one time, and three plain modern bungalows. They were all huddled on the right hand side of the road. On the left side, wire fencing separated the road from the ploughed fields that stretched behind West Bay. The brown earth was already fizzing green with new growth. Heaven knows what it was, I hadn’t got to vegetables yet in my Idiot’s Guide to Gardening.
O’Hara leant his bike against the wire fence and checked his watch. ‘Seven forty-five.’ He indicated two of the bungalows. ‘Those were her final two deliveries; Daily Mails.’
‘Right.’ I rolled the papers into deliverable pads. The guy was paying me to be here, I felt obliged to contribute. ‘The way you were talking to the Walkinshaws, I got the impression you thought maybe Higgins wasn’t as guilty as brother Dec and his flying fists had implied? A few hair ornaments under a mattress wouldn’t have got the case to court.’
‘No. According to Dec, nobody in the investigation had any doubts about Higgins’s guilt. It wasn’t so much the evidence against him, it was his attitude during interview. He had what Dec described as “a knowing smirk” on his face the entire time. He made it clear, without ever putting it into words, that he thought the police were several steps behind him. It was as if he knew he was going to get away with it.’
‘Where did Higgins say he was that morning?’
‘House just outside Wakens Keep. He claimed he’d been asked to provide estimates for some building and decorating work. But when he got there the owner wasn’t at home. He hung around for a while and then drove back.’
‘What did the owner say?’
‘Admitted he’d seen Higgins and asked him to call back, but couldn’t remember fixing on that morning. He’d gone to stay with his daughter for a few days. Apparently he was in the early stages of dementia, so he could have got the days confused.’
‘Or Higgins could have noticed that and used it to fake up an alibi that couldn’t be proved or disproved.’
We were standing opposite one of the bungalows where Heidi had delivered. A woman came out of the front door and walked up the path to place something in the large plastic wheelie bin that had been left near the front gate for collection. ‘Have you got a business card on you, duchy?’
‘Investigator or decorator?’
‘Investigator.’
I dug one out. O’Hara called to the woman as she reached her door. ‘Could we have a word?’
Her name was Tess Collins and she remembered Heidi. ‘Not likely to forget her now, am I? What are you investigating? They said how the bloke who did it was dead. Her dad did for him. Good job too. I’d do the same, anyone touched one of mine.’
‘There are still things Heidi’s parents need resolved,’ O’Hara said. ‘Did you see Heidi that morning?’
‘I told the police this at the time.’ She drew the front door to as if she didn’t want her voice to carry inside. Somewhere within the house a radio was playing rap music. ‘She put the Billings paper in first. And then she came over and pushed ours through. I saw her from the bedroom window. The baby was mardy; wouldn’t sleep for more than ten minutes at a time. I remember thinking bloody typical that is, first time the party at Emma Johnson’s place breaks up before midnight, and the baby keeps us up instead. Most weekends nobody got much sleep around here thanks to the music going on all hours at her place.’ She directed a vicious look at the largest house. ‘I mean, you felt sorry for the child, left all on her ownsome, but thank God she died.’ She suddenly realised what she’d said. I could see the resolve to defend her remark forming in her eyes.
In the unlikely event that the two deaths were linked, I asked what party-girl Emma had died from.
‘Cancer. Riddled with it they reckoned.’
So much for that theory.
‘Did you see Heidi ride away, Mrs Collins?’ O’Hara asked.
‘Did I see anyone following her you mean? Police asked me that at the time too, and the answer’s not changed; no.’ She jerked her head in the direction of West Bay. ‘She rode off that way, same as usual. I watched her until she disappeared out of sight on that pink bike of hers, then I went through into the kitchen. It’s in the back. Didn’t see anything else. Her parents came here you know? Asking the same questions. But what can you do? We didn’t see anything. Can’t say you did, if you didn’t.’ On being asked whether anyone in the other houses would remember Heidi, she shook her head. ‘I’m the only one left from that time.’
‘Whither now?’ I asked my temporary employer as we cycled slowly back towards West Bay.
‘Last stretch.’ He swung right. We were in Schoolhouse Lane. On our right were those fizzing green fields again. To our left was a stretch of grassy scrub which ended in the back gardens of the final east-west road of West Bay.
The land was banked on the left with a thick hedgerow. That was unusual. Most of the hedgerows around here had long been grubbed up to form the large, more easily worked farm fields. Pulling up, I stood on my toes and tried to see over to the West Bay houses. From this angle I could see the top windows of some; others were obscured by large trees or bushes growing in their back gardens. On the other hand, the fields to the right stretched away in plain view.
O’Hara swung his bike in a lazy circle and rode slowly back to me. ‘Her bike was about halfway along. Walkinshaw took it back home when he found it, so they never mapped the exact spot.’
‘It’s an odd place for a snatch,’ I remarked. ‘Anyone in those fields, or even looking out of their bedroom windows, could have seen it.’
‘But unfortunately nobody did. They drew a blank in the houses and there was no one working the fields that day. But you’re right, it’s not somewhere you’d plan to take anyone. Which means it was either a spur of the moment thing, or she went willingly.’
‘If she went willingly, why leave the bike behind out here, where anyone cou
ld take it?’
‘Yep, the bike’s the bugger. Unless someone brought it back here later and dumped it to confuse things.’
‘Well it worked. I’m confused. Was there any forensic on the bike?’
‘No. It rained heavily from that Monday morning to the next day. The bike and the lane were both washed clean.’
We completed the ride down to the end of the lane and turned left to glide down into West Bay. It put us at the bottom left-hand corner of the rectangle — and Heidi at the opposite end of the sea road from her house and the newsagent. We wheeled our bikes to the parapet. Cream foam and white gulls hovered above the rushing ocean, blown in all directions by the strengthening rain.
‘So what are your plans for the rest of the day, duchy?’
‘I’m going to dig over a few flowerbeds. But before that I have to go and kill a client. It’s kind of a job creation thing.’
‘You want company?’
‘I don’t think that would work out. I’m meeting her in the ladies’ loo.’
Chapter Eighteen
‘You lied to me.’
‘I did not lie. I told you my son was receiving anonymous letters. I asked you to find out who was sending them. How have I lied?’
‘You said there were no suspects. You forgot to mention the most obvious one: Jonathon.’
‘That’s not —’ Della broke off as the door to the ladies’ loo opened and two women walked in. Unlocking the sanitary towel dispenser, she lifted the hinge cover and started re-filling it from the cardboard box she was balancing on her hip.
When I’d phoned her last night, I’d got the answerphone. By the time she’d rung me back it was gone midnight and she’d got an early start today. Friday, it would seem, was prime time for tampon-stacking. ‘Lots of customers in the shops and pubs weekends,’ Della had explained. ‘They like the dispensers full. You’ll have to come to the house before I leave, or catch up with me.’
O’Hara’s bike ride had ruled out the first option, so I’d caught up with her in my old bunny stomping ground: the BHS toilets.
I waited until the two customers had left before saying, ‘What’s going on, Della? Why didn’t you tell me Jonathon had done this before?’
‘He hasn’t. Not letters.’
‘But graffiti threats painted over your house. What the hell was that all about?’
‘I —’ More customers came in and Della mouthed ‘wait’. She finished filling the machine, relocked, and then led me outside. ‘My husband hanged himself when Jonathon was ten. Jon found him. The useless bastard never could do anything right. The sheet material stretched. Throttled him slowly. They found gouges on his neck where he’d tried to claw the noose loose.’ She wandered around a stand of bras on special offer. ‘They think he wasn’t quite dead when Jonathon found him. When I got home he was sitting on the front step. He just kept saying “I couldn’t help him, Mum, I couldn’t help him.”’
I tried to picture the scene Jonathon would have walked into. His father’s legs could still have been kicking. He’d have been making choking sounds, his tongue bulging out of his mouth. Jon would have been too small to take his weight, but he might have tried until his dad had finally stopped making those sounds.
We’d reached the stairs to the ground floor. Della paused with one hand on the rail. ‘The psychologists said Jon blamed himself. Thought he should have saved his dad. He used to cut himself. He was punishing himself. Like when he wrote those things on the walls. I didn’t tell you any of this, because I didn’t want to put the idea in your head that he’d written them. I needed an unbiased opinion. Is he writing them?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘And if he is?’
‘He needs medical help. Clemency won’t like it. Few times in the past I’ve tried to get him to see someone, a counsellor or something. Not for anything like this,’ she added quickly. ‘But he drinks too much. And he takes things; pills. Every time I tried to get him professional help, Clemency’d accuse me of trying to keep him tied to my apron strings. She said he hated doctors. Which is true, but sometimes you’ve got to do bad to make things right. I’m figuring she just doesn’t want to be known as the actress with the crazy husband. If he is writing those letters, then I’ll get him to a doctor somehow, even if I have to bloody kidnap him to do it. But I’ll only have one chance at it. Clemency and I don’t get along at the best of times; if I force this and then it turns out he wasn’t writing the letters, that will be it; she’ll make sure I’m kept away in future. I must know, for certain, before I make a move.’
Was that what Clemency had meant by it being ‘against the rules’ to talk about the letters? Bringing it into the open that her husband had mental health problems could damage her career? I became aware that Della was giving me a strange look. Then realised that I was holding on to the rail with both hands and going down the stairs sideways. Bunny habits die hard. Hurriedly facing front, I told Della I’d be in touch as soon as I had any evidence, one way or the other. But in the meantime, she had to be straight with me in the future.
I went back via the office and found that Ruby had left the microfiche copy of the Seatoun Express Jonathon had shredded at the Shoreline set. A quick flick through revealed nothing that could have triggered his hissy fit. It was just the usual boring collection of planning disputes, reports on assorted society meetings, wedding pictures, and adverts; the DIY superstore was offering half-price deals for its grand opening, the local wallpaper shop was offering half-price deals because it was going out of business. Not a lot there to blow a fuse over; but then if Jon was operating with a couple of letters short of the whole keyboard how could I assess what was likely to freak him out? It wasn’t the local paper we received now. That was called the ‘Times’ and came out on Thursday.
‘We used to get two local papers when I was a little kid.’ Jan resumed typing. Her speed was never fast, but now it had slowed to five words a minute. Mostly because she was pecking at the keys with the tops of her nails, which seemed to have grown about three inches overnight.
‘What the hell have you done with your claws?’
‘Extensions.’ She spread her fingers wide. Each nail was purple, overlaid with a black spider’s web, complete with a tiny spider with red jewels for eyes. ‘Wicked, aren’t they?’
‘No. When did the other paper delivery stop?’
‘Dunno. Years ago.’
The chances were it had gone out of business. It was her birth-date edition according to Clemency. You’d have to be remarkably lucky to just come across that date. More likely it had been sourced from a specialist dealer. ‘Go through the yellow pages. See if you can find a dealer who can supply copies of that newspaper.’
‘I’m not your slave.’
‘If you were spiderwoman, I’d have traded you in for a working model years ago. I’m off to Clemency’s house if anyone wants me. Don’t forget — I’m the gardener if you need to get in touch.’
‘How am I gonna do that? You haven’t got a mobile and I don’t have the number of the telephone at the house.’
Neither did I, now I thought about it. I scrawled the address and gave that to Jan. She filed it in her all-purpose storage facility, the wastepaper bin.
Quite how I was supposed to prove Jonathon was writing letters to himself I hadn’t a clue, but I figured while I was butchering the garden I could legitimately charge the time to Della’s account. And I had a few hours to waste before I met Ellie Walkinshaw outside West Bay Primary.
*
When I got to the house, I initially thought I’d have to waste them somewhere else since there was no answer to my knocking and ringing. I was returning to the car with my armful of gardening tools when I spotted Bianca turning into the road.
She was laden down with dry-cleaning bags folded over her injured arm, while the other clutched Cappuccino’s lead. I heard the excited squeak as Cappy switched from ambling to a full-on there’s-a-fox-on-my-tail gallop. Bianca arrived at a run, towe
d by the bouncing bunny. ‘Hello. I wasn’t sure if you were coming today. Have I kept you waiting? Sorry. I had to get Clemency’s dry-cleaning. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting. Sorry. Could you hold this a minute. Sorry.’
She managed to disentangle her door keys and get us both through the front door, although at least one of us was tied up in the rabbit’s lead. ‘Sorry. Oh sorry.’ I could see why she must have been the perfect target for those school bullies that Laurel’s casual remark about ‘having fun’ had implied last night.
I took the dry-cleaning from her and persuaded the rabbit to hop the other way with a little encouragement up his fluffy-tailed rump. Bianca reclaimed the plastic bags and carried them through to the kitchen. Following her, I casually hooked the lead over the bottom post of the staircase. I shut the door between the kitchen and the hall and asked if we were on our own today. It seemed more tactful than asking whether I should pop up and check if Jonathon was unconscious anywhere.
‘Oh no. Clemency’s lying down upstairs. She’s got a night shoot so she has to rest up before. The camera can make you look washed out.’
I’d been ringing and knocking like crazy. Either the woman was in a deeper sleep than Van Winkle, or answering the door was another chore she’d delegated to the unpaid help. I asked how Jonathon was. ‘Since his …?’ I mimed someone diving.
‘Oh much better. That was just a mistake. Too much speed. I knew it would be. Why would Jonathon want to hurt himself? He’s got Clemency. And this house. And soon we’ll have’ — her voice dropped to avoid any eavesdropping kitchen utensils — ‘the baby.’ She beamed. ‘Jon has so much to be happy about.’ She finally noticed one member of this happy little family unit was missing. ‘Where’s Cappy?’
‘In the hall.’
‘He won’t like that.’ She went to open the door to the hall. It swung open just as she reached it. Bianca screamed her head off.
Clemency was standing in the doorway. There was enough blood soaked down her T-shirt and cropped trousers for me to have visions of explaining to Della that her son had just cut his own throat.
