Grace Smith Investigates

by Liz Evans

  Selwyn hitched a chair out from under the dust-sheeting. ‘Four months. We were lucky to get the lease for a song.’

  ‘More like a whole opera,’ Esther muttered. She’d taken a bundle of letters from under the drinks pallet. From where I was standing, most of them appeared to be bills. Except for one.

  Selwyn pounced, twitching it from her fingers. ‘Is that from the grant committee?’

  The thousand-watt light that had sprung on behind his bright blue eyes started to fade as he absorbed the contents of the letter. When he’d finished, he crushed the paper slowly and deliberately between his long fingers and pitched the ball into the far corner of the room.

  ‘That’s not going to help,’ Esther said quietly. ‘They said it wasn’t personal. Necessary economies—’

  ‘Economies! They practically promised us that research money. You know I was counting on that field trip. We must go.’

  ‘We can’t afford luxuries—’

  ‘Since when has a major excavation been considered a luxury by a dedicated scholar?’

  ‘Since she started feeling physically ill every time a bill drops on to the doormat. Please, Selwyn, since we’re stuck with this house, we need to put in some hard work over the next few years. You’ve seen how well the children’s course has gone. Once we’ve got trained instructors in, started to show a profit—’

  ‘We could end up in The Times list of the top one hundred companies? I hardly think so. I’ve already told you, I want no one under eighteen on these premises again. And if you must be so relentlessly cheerful, perhaps you could do it out of my hearing? This place is a dump and there’s no sense in pretending it will ever be anything else. Why don’t you cry? Or yell?’

  ‘Because,’ Esther said quietly, ‘if I started, I might never stop.’ There was a silence. I was conscious of holding my breath. I got the impression they’d both forgotten I was there for the minute.

  ‘I’ll be outside making sure those louts haven’t inflicted too much damage on the instruments, if you want me,’ Selwyn finally said.

  We both waited until his footsteps had faded before either of us spoke again.

  ‘Sorry if I’ve added to the problem, Mrs Purbrick.’

  ‘Professor, actually. But call me Esther. We’re both anthropologists. Selwyn specialises in the sub-arctic cultures and I’m interested in the south-western tribes. You’ll have to excuse him today. It’s been a while since he’s managed any pure research instead of ... well—’

  ‘Capering around like a pantomime cow?’

  ‘Yes. This has been about the lowest spot in a bloody awful year. It should have been a buffalo, of course, but have you any idea how hard it is to find a buffalo robe around here?’

  ‘They speak of little else in the amusement arcades of Seatoun.’

  ‘Is that where you’re from? It will be easy for you to get in to the courses, then. You won’t need the residential package.’

  It was probably just as well, I thought, given the unfinished state of this place. But I had to tell her the truth - well, part of it. I trotted out the mature student line again. ‘I’m sorry about the misunderstanding, but I’m not used to being accosted by elks. I really would like to get these people’s permission before I stick them in my thesis as typical village store customers.’

  I fanned the prints. She pounced on the overdressed Indian squaw as I’d hoped. ‘That’s Rainwing.’

  ‘Also known as ... ?’

  ‘Also known as Rainwing. I have no idea what her real name is. Some of the clients like to get into the spirit of the place: choose an Indian name and remain in character for the duration of the course. Rainwing is one of those.’

  ‘But you must have some idea. An address? Telephone number? Bank details?’

  ‘No. I don’t. She started turning up a few years ago, paid for her course in cash and declined to provide any address for fixture mailings.’

  ‘Is that usual?’

  ‘No, but we can’t afford to be picky.’ Esther’s voice had taken on a slightly impatient edge now I was no longer a potential customer. But Pis can’t afford to be picky either.

  I pressed on. ‘I thought you only opened four months ago.’

  ‘Opened here. Originally we had other premises, about fifteen miles away, until we ... well, never mind. I’m afraid I can’t help you. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to get cleaned up. I’ve a class to prepare materials for.’

  ‘Didn’t Rainwing ever mention where she came from? You must have talked while you wove or whatever?’

  ‘I got the idea she came down from London - although I can’t tell you why. Apart from that ...’ She shrugged. ‘She rings up, books a course, immerses herself in the whole experience ... and, well, blends into our world.’

  ‘Hardly blends in that get-up, I’d have thought.’

  I waved the photo that showed the exploded parrot outfit in its fullest technicolour glory.

  ‘She likes colour. I’ve noticed that in her work. But she can be more restrained. Here.’ She scrabbled in the desk drawer and drew out an album. It seemed to contain mostly end-of-course group shots. She selected a group posing by the steps of a large house and pointed to a figure in the front line.

  It was my second legatee, but in this one she was wearing a fetching little above-the-knee buckskin dress in a restrained shade of, well, buckskin, I guess, plus calf length boots and a woven band of beads round her forehead. Her pose with one leg slightly bent and her hands on her hips was pure model-girl chic. Esther plainly wanted rid of me. I had to resort to leaving my phone number and asking her to get Rainwing to call. Normally I’d have given the office number, but since Vetch’s would hardly tie in with the student story, I had to scribble out my flat’s.

  ‘I’ll pass your details on if she gets in touch,’ Esther promised. ‘Although I’m sure you could publish those pictures without her permission. I don’t suppose Rainwing has anything to hide.’

  A statement that - with hindsight - was on a par with Custer’s famous ‘Don’t worry, men, we’ll easily surround all those redskins’

  9

  The centre was using a side gate as the main entrance to the property now. Possibly because the flatter verges gave better parking for the cars that had arrived to collect the assorted paint- daubed savages who were pouring out as Esther shepherded me firmly off the premises.

  I had to skirt back to pick up the bike. Unfortunately it was still where I’d hidden it.

  Approaching St Biddy’s, I came across a familiar lump hunched on top of the churchyard wall.

  ‘Cheers, Carter.’

  ‘Hi. D’you find those people?’

  ‘I found Harry Rouse. And his dad. You could have warned me he was a few chickens short of the full coop.’

  ‘Atch’s OK. My great-grandad’s sister was his grandmother.’ He sent a chip of church wall whirling through the air. It cracked off a distant stone buried amongst the untrimmed grass on the far side of the burial plots. ‘That’s him. Great-Grandad Elijah Cooper. And his wife, Jeanette, nee Tanner. And that,’ another stone soared into the air and made contact with something, ‘is his brother, Great-Uncle Carter. We got a special connection, me and him. And his daughters: Susannah, Sophia, Maria ...’ A fusillade of pebbles whizzed around the burial mounds.

  It was a pleasant enough spot if you didn’t mind sharing it with the dead. Heaving myself up beside him, I listened to the hum and chirrup of unseen insects, and enjoyed the sun warming my face and arms for a while before taking out the photos and staring at the blank shiny images again in the vain hope that they would give me some clue to their lives: name, address and current phone number, for preference. Carter continued to target the dead. Every so often my concentration was interrupted by the ‘ting’ of a direct hit and Carter’s hissed ‘Yesssss.’

  ‘Are they all your relatives?’ I asked.

  ‘Most. My family’s lived around here since forever. They’re pretty much all buried here. ’Cept my m
um and dad; they’re up the cremmy. They don’t bury people in here no more, except for the mixed doubles.’

  ‘The whats?’

  ‘You know, when one of them’s already buried here. If they bought a double, they open it up for the other one.’

  ‘When did your parents die?’

  ‘Six years ago. My dad crashed his van.’ He pronounced my ‘moy’, with that slight trace of local accent.

  ‘Do you live with your grandparents?’

  ‘Just Gran. First of all I was in foster care, then Gran said she’d take me.’

  ‘That was good, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Suppose. ’Cept she’s old. She was old when she had my mum. And she just doesn’t see about ... things. It was OK at the foster home. We used to play football and have rumbles at night when they put the lights out.’

  ‘So why didn’t you say you wanted to stay there?’

  ‘I couldn’t do that. My gran would have been upset. She’s all right really. She just thinks how things were when she was young is how it ought to be now. Only it’s not, is it?’ He hunched along the wall a bit, pushing a plump thigh into mine. ‘D’you want to give me another tenner?’

  ‘Why should I want to do that?’

  ‘I could ask around about the other two in your pictures.’

  I wondered briefly if he’d known all along who the others were and was just holding out until I’d upped the ante. But apparently not.

  ‘I told you,’ Carter said indignantly, ‘I’ve never seen them before. How about that tenner?’

  ‘Dream on, Carter.’

  I shuffled the shiny prints for the umpteenth time. Whichever way I looked at them, they weren’t prepared to give up any secrets. Carter leant across me to help himself to a couple of shots and repeat his offer to flash them around the village. ‘What about a bluey?’

  ‘I haven’t a small kangaroo about my person just at present, Carter.’

  ‘It’s a fiver. A five-pound note, you know?’

  ‘What happened to my other money?’

  ‘I’m saving for ... something.’ He hauled up his shirt, exposing more spare tyres than Kwik-Fit and those girlish breasts, in order to examine the ring in his navel. ‘I’m thinking of doing my nipples next. Or maybe getting a tattoo. What d’you think?’

  ‘Ouch,’ I said succinctly.

  ‘The pain doesn’t bother me. I can take it.’ His coolly unconcerned shrug unbalanced him. He regained his balance by grabbing at my waist.

  I jabbed a finger into his soft midriff. It was like poking proving dough. ‘Shift those raging hormones away and get your thrills somewhere else.’

  Carter blushed at being caught out before taking his hand off my waist, his right nipple off my left arm and putting a few inches between my leg and his right thigh. ‘Are you going to give me any money?’

  ‘Carter, I told you, I’m a student. Students are among the great financial inadequates of the world. So why the hell would I want to throw cash at you?’

  ‘Not all students are. Some have money. Especially the old ones. They’ve had jobs and things, haven’t they, before they joined up. Some of them get redundancy payments.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t. I’m poor. Very poor. Far too poor to want to dish out fivers to bored self-mutilators. And I’m not old.’

  ‘OK.’ He slewed round on the wall and went back to pitching at long-dead ancestors. ‘Luke wasn’t poor when he was a student. His uncle gave him cash.’

  ‘Lucky old Luke.’ Swinging my legs round so I was facing the same way as him, I surveyed the grassy mounds and begrimed monuments. ‘Which one’s Luke?’

  Carter shot out an arm. ‘That’s him.’ Leaning back, I made out the bonnet of a car just nosing into sight around the far bend in the narrow road. ‘Awesome motor, isn’t it? He’s got a brill motorbike too.’

  It was an open-topped red sports car. The old sort, with enough chrome, leather and ‘vroom-vroom’ noise to rate it a ‘classic’ tag and to have his motor insurance agent salivating at the thought of sufficient commission to cover two weeks in the Bahamas - five-star class.

  Carter waved. The driver raised an arm in salute. I squirmed round again to re-face the road. And kicked Grannie Vetch’s bike straight into the path of the rapidly approaching bonnet. I dived to rescue my only form of transport.

  He had great brakes. And terrific reflexes. In fact, all of him could be classified under one of those headings. Just under six foot of bronzed muscles which rippled under a clingy white T- shirt, with a stomach and bum to die for in lycra shorts. His face was partially obscured by a blue peaked baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses. Vaulting out of the car, he whipped the glasses off, fixed a pair of anxious tawny eyes on me, and asked if I was OK.

  ‘Just fine.’ I gave him a relaxed smile to show it was no big deal and I regularly worked out by taking a tumbling somersault off a wall. I’d ended up on the far verge with the bike clasped to my chest and generous proof that Vetch had been keeping the damn thing well-greased smeared down my front.

  ‘Here, let me.’ He pulled the cycle clear to allow me to scramble up. ‘You sure you’re OK?’

  ‘A hundred per cent, thanks.’ I flexed and bent each leg in turn to demonstrate, and discovered I’d thrust the photo folder down the front of my pants before my dive. It crackled embarrassingly, but I didn’t feel inclined to retrieve it with Luke watching. ‘Grace Smith.’

  ‘Luke Steadman. Great save. Ever played American football?’

  ‘Nope. Haven’t even played the British version.’

  ‘Luke’s lived in the States,’ Carter announced, mooching back to join us. His concerned reaction to my imminent flattening under Luke’s tyres had been to stick his head sideways into the car as soon as Luke vaulted out and examine the dashboard. Polishing the bonnet with tentative fingertips, he asked if Luke was going back to the States soon.

  ‘Hope so, champ. Should get the house sale sorted in the next few weeks. And then I can start getting the crew in place. But don’t sweat it. Few more years and you’ll be out there yourself.’

  ‘Be another five years at least.’

  ‘You heading Stateside then, Carter?’ I asked.

  ‘Thought I’d do my degree out there. There’s scholarships you can apply for. After that I’ll get a place somewhere smooth; California or Florida maybe. One of those ocean-front condos like on the TV. And a car.’ He smoothed another wistful stroke over the shiny metal.

  I glanced at Luke, half expecting to see amusement at the very least at the fat kid’s ambitions. But he didn’t appear to find anything odd in Carter’s grand plan. He asked if I was staying in the village.

  ‘She’s a student,’ Carter pushed in before I could answer. ‘She’s looking for these. You ever seen them before, Luke?’ He produced two photos which he must have held on to when I’d left the wall so hurriedly.

  Luke stretched across to the passenger side to take them. It gave me the chance to hoick the cardboard album out of my nether regions.

  Carter pointed out, needlessly I should have thought, that they had been taken outside his gran’s store. ‘Last week. The date’s on the back.’

  Luke twisted his fingers to verify the thin line of printed figures running across the developer’s logo. He shook his head. ‘No. Sorry. Doesn’t hit any home runs with me.’ The warning blare of a horn announced an oncoming driver couldn’t get past him. ‘I’d best move. If you’re walking back into the village, Carter, I’ve got something for you.’

  ‘Great. Thanks, Luke.’

  Carter’s face lit up. ‘You going in the store? Only Gran said to remind you you’ve not settled your paper bill yet.’

  ‘My mistake. I’ll get it sorted.’

  Luke returned the two snaps to Carter, who passed them back to me. I thrust them in among the other prints without checking which ones he’d been looking at. Which - with hindsight - was a big mistake.

  10

  The car behind Luke’s was the Ford Escort fr
om my first call at the village. It screeched past us in a cloud of exhaust fumes and thundering sound system.

  I walked the bike in the same direction. Carter seemed determined to stay latched on to me. Scuffing small clouds of dust with the toes of his trainers, he provided a running commentary on the village and its inhabitants. ‘That’s the Thatchers’ place. They only come weekends. That’s the Grieves’. That’s the places for old people. My gran says she’d crawl on her hands and knees before they get her in there.’

  I stopped, staring at the small block of newish flats, a sudden idea forming. ‘Hold this a sec, Carter.’

  Carter took hold of the handlebars I’d just leant on his stomach. I scrabbled through the prints until I’d sorted out the ones of Rainwing and dealt them into their correct time sequence.

  Harry Rouse had turned left out of the store, presumably walking back to the farm track; the woman had passed down the lane in front of Barbra’s hiding place; but Rainwing had turned right into the village. By the final frame, her front leg was lifted well off the ground as she started to run. And what was there to run for at that time in the morning?

  I scanned the timetable on the toy-town stop in front of the flats. It wasn’t a long read since, as Carter had already told me, there were only two buses a day. The earlier one left at seven forty-five a.m.

  ‘Do you ever catch the early bus, Carter?’

  ‘Every morning, term-time.’

  ‘Is it always the same driver?’

  °Cept when he’s on holiday. Or sick.’

  ‘What’s he look like?’

  ‘What’s it worth?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ll ask someone else.’

  ‘A fiver.’

  ‘One quid. Final offer.’ I dug deep into my jeans pocket and disentangled the handkerchief I’d pinned in there. Knotted in one corner was my handful of telephone change. I crossed Carter’s hand with five pieces of silver. ‘Now, give - what’s he look like?’

  ‘Gross.’

  ‘Can you be a bit more specific?’

  Carter stuck his hand over his face, squashing the nose flat and inflating his cheeks. ‘Dross,’ he trumpeted nasally. ‘He’s called Spencer.’