A blob of a face at the window made me start.
It was Steely Jacobs. He was peering intently into the shop and didn’t see me at first, hidden as I was behind a pile of books raised on either side of me, as if subconsciously I’d been building a protective wall around me.
I waved at him above the stack of books and he stiffened. He stared at me suspiciously and looked like he was on the verge of taking flight. I lifted my cup of tea and pointed to it.
‘Fancy a cuppa?’ I mouthed.
He studied the cup like it was a hand grenade or something, but he slowly came to the door and eased it open.
‘You’re open,’ he said.
‘I was thinking of shutting up shop for the night. Nobody’s coming in. Except you, that is. Want a cup of tea? I’ve just boiled the kettle.’ I realised I just wanted company. Even Steely Jacobs’ company.’
‘Nah,’ he said, plonking his old and gnarled walking stick against my desk.
‘Are you looking for something? A particular book, perhaps?’ I asked.
‘Nah.’
‘I saw you on the beach…’ I began. He looked at me with those suspicious eyes again. ‘You know, when the found the body. Shame about the dead woman.’
‘Shame,’ he said, his words devoid of emotion.
The silence grew awkward as he stood there with his hands in his coat pockets, moisture glistening on the tip of his leather hat, his watery eyes taking in his surroundings.
‘I heard you used to play the guitar,’ I ventured, hoping to spark a conversation and beginning to wish I’d not been too enthusiastic with my off-the-cuff invitation.
‘Where are the bones?’ he said, the question taking me by surprise.
‘The dead woman’s bones?’
‘Where are they?’
‘I guess the police have them somewhere doing DNA tests and the like to determine who she was. Why?’
‘DNA tests?’
‘You know, standard tests. DNA. Chemical stuff.’
‘I heard about those,’ he said. ‘You reckon that’s where she is now, being tested on.’
‘Pretty sure about it,’ I said. ‘That’s what happens. It’s standard procedure,’ I said, trying to sound knowledgeable.
‘You think they’ll find out who she was?’
‘Definitely. Sooner or later.’
He grunted something indecipherable. ‘How long before they can do that?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Mr Jacobs. I’m no expert.’
‘But they’ll do it, right?’
‘Oh yes. Eventually.’
Steely Jacobs nodded slowly. Mind you, he did everything slowly.
‘Maybe that’s a good thing. You found the bones, didn’t you?’ he said, fixing me in a cold stare that was quite unnerving.
I nodded. ‘Yes, I did.’ He stood immobile and at first it looked like he’d fallen asleep standing up with his eyes wide open. ‘Mr Jacobs, is everything alright?’ He seemed to snap out of a trace. ‘Is there something you wanted from me?’ I added.
He shook his head sharply and left the shop. I saw him scoot by the window, his body bent against the cold wind. I realised he had left his walking stick behind and called out, but his figure was fast disappearing.
It was as I was staring out at him, the reflection of my own ghostly face staring straight back at me, that I saw the woman again.
She was reflected in the shop window too, and she was standing right behind me.
I turned smartly round, my heart crashing. I dropped the walking stick and it clattered onto the floor noisily.
But the shop was empty.
I turned back to the window, but it was only my own astonished face that peered back.
I had imagined it, and chastised myself. I really ought to get her out of my head. My mind was starting to play tricks on me.
I shivered. The room had dropped decidedly chilly, I mused, turning up the asthmatic-sounding fan heater.
5
A Girl, a Long Time Ago
The police eventually gave a statement on the news and in the local papers. They said that the murdered woman had been buried at some time in the 1970s, as far as they could determine. They were no nearer identifying her but were making steady progress. The body was that of a young woman whose age was estimated at between twenty and thirty years old. What wasn’t in doubt was that she’d been murdered. She’d suffered a number of blows to the head, which the police determined hadn’t been the cause of death. She had died from asphyxiation after being buried alive but unconscious. Her skull had been mutilated afterwards. They didn’t go into detail. Apparently they hadn’t recovered all the body parts but they believed the missing bones might have been washed away by the sea during the same storms that helped excavate her body. The police concluded by saying they’d be interviewing local people, particularly those who had been around at the time of the murder, in order to piece together who she was. Any information, they insisted, no matter how small, could be vital.
I shook my head. Mark had been close to being right. How on earth did he find out such things?
My next thought was for the poor woman. I tried to picture her. Every little detail I found out about her made her ever more real. Who was she? How did she come to be bludgeoned to death and buried up on the cliff? And who could do such a callous thing as to bury her alive?
I looked at my shelf full of detective and crime novels. I used to read the odd-one or two when I was younger. Patricia Cornwell, Minette Walters, that kind of thing. But with the woman’s gruesome discovery, murder had suddenly become very real to me, no longer the stuff of novels, no longer escapism or something to titillate. Strange how this unknown woman’s death had already been turned into entertainment. The stuff of gossip, macabre conjecture, gruesome details. I began to feel very sorry for the woman, and in some ways sorry that I’d ever stumbled upon her remains. At least she’d been resting in peace. Now she was under the glare of the spotlight, bones in a butcher’s shop that are thrown to the twin hounds of scandal and rumour. But I consoled myself that at least one day her killer would be found. If whoever did it was still alive.
‘You’re coming to dinner,’ he insisted.
I insisted I didn’t want dinner.
‘I’m not good company at the moment,’ I said.
‘You’re never good company,’ said Mark Boothman, ‘but I’ve been invited to my brother’s place to have dinner with him and his wife, and I need your moral support.’
‘You make them out to be ogres. They’re perfectly nice people,’ I said. ‘It’s you that’s the ogre. You don’t like anybody. I think you secretly eat children.’
‘Only with chips. Anyway, I like you, that count s, doesn’t it?’ said Mark.
‘That’s what I find disconcerting,’ I said. ‘So your brother’s back?’
Mark’s brother, Joseph, was some ten years older than Mark, managed a number of small-time rock bands in his spare time, more as a hobby than anything. Together with his wife Sharon they ran their real business, The Bay, a hotel further up the coast from Lyme Regis and situated high on the cliffs midway between the seaside town of West Bay and the picturesque village of Burton Bradstock. Every now and again Joseph would spend a few days away, sometimes a month at a time during the quieter winter months when trade was slack, working with his bands. Joseph and Mark had never seen eye to eye on anything. As an outsider watching their relationship, to me it was like watching a flame and a firework’s touch paper hovering in disconcertingly close proximity. I know, because I’d seen the resulting explosions when the two met. As youngsters they were worse, but age, I hoped, had started to mellow them.
‘At least he’s trying,’ I said.
Mark screwed up his nose. ‘What’s he after, that’s what I say?’
‘He wants to play big brother, that’s all. You’ll disappoint Sharon if you don’t go,’ I said. ‘You know how she has this soft spot for you.’
‘That’s why you’ve
got to come,’ he said. ‘I need to have something between mother hen fussing all over me and Joseph’s insufferably puerile ramblings about his bands. God, he really should grow up. Have you seen the clothes he wears, the state of his hair? He thinks he’s twenty or something, like the kids he manages.’
‘Young at heart,’ I put forward.
‘That’s why I need you,’ he said. ‘You’re so damn diplomatic.’
In the end I gave in and said I’d go along to dinner with him, provided it was OK with Sharon. ‘I don’t want to impose,’ I said.
‘And you’re so damn proper,’ he observed. ‘Anyhow, she likes any excuse to cook extra potatoes.’
I told him not to be so nasty all the time and he told me to be ready for seven or thereabouts.
We took the undulating coast road to the hotel. We were late. I hated being late. Mark’s seven-or-thereabouts turned out to be more like eight in the evening.
To our right the sea was shimmering dully like diamonds sprinkled on a lead sheet. The sky was getting dark already, clouds massing like a purple army over the still water. To our left the land was already succumbing to the night and disappearing from view. I saw my face’s reflection in the car’s side window, a pale blob set against the black void that was the land. I thought yet again about the woman in the shop. Her reflected face.
‘You’ve been married…’ I said absently.
He laughed. ‘I should say! Why’d you ask? Is it about Trisha?’
I shook my head decisively. ‘Absolutely not. Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Do you believe in love at first sight?’
He laughed again, this time heartily. ‘God, no!’
‘So with your previous wives you never saw them and thought, hey, that’s the woman for me?’
‘Sure I thought that. That’s natural. But I don’t believe in love.’
‘What? Not at all?’
He shook his head determinedly. ‘Most definitely not. Love doesn’t exist. It’s all biological, driven by the need to breed.’
‘That’s so crude. So base.’
‘Love’s just something we use to dress up the sordid, physiological fact. We need to have sex, keep the old human race ticking along.’
‘What about companionship?’ I ventured.
‘That’s to do with loneliness. People are gregarious by nature, like animals in a pack. Without company we get lonely. We seek companionship, makes no difference whether it’s the same sex or opposite. Tell me why most people enjoy being with their friends better than with their wives or husbands. If love was about companionship then we’d marry our friends.’ He faced the road. Then his eyes lit up. ‘You’ve seen someone!’
‘I haven’t.’
‘You have. You’ve seen someone you fancy and it’s not Trisha.’
‘That’s absurd.’
‘Why is it? I’ve done it many times. Married a few of them, too.’
‘I was just asking, that’s all.’ I wished I hadn’t. Mark wasn’t known for his sensitivity. ‘I saw someone the other day, in the shop.’
‘I told you!’ he said. ‘You don’t fool me you randy sod.’
‘I wasn’t being randy. It wasn’t like that at all.’
‘Did the earth move? Was there heavenly music, cherubs with harps and that kind of thing?’
‘Now you’re being boorish and insufferable,’ I breathed angrily, feeling my cheeks begin to burn.
‘Boorish? My dear old chap, that’s not something you hear every day.’
‘Give you an inch and you love to mock me, don’t you?’
‘So you never got that with Trisha then, this love at first sight?’ he pursued like he was a dog that had hold of a rat and wouldn’t let go.
‘I don’t know what I got,’ I said petulantly.
‘You’re marrying her.’
‘She thinks we’re getting married,’ I said.
He blew out a breath. ‘I wouldn’t want to be there when you tell her you’re not. She’s chosen her bridesmaid.’
‘What?’ I groaned and sank back in my seat.
‘You’re going to have to tell her, you know, before she books the church.’ He chuckled. ‘Ding-dong, the bells are gonna chime!’
‘I think she’s just hooked on the idea,’ I said. ‘I don’t think she’s really in love with me. I’m not sure what she’s in love with.’
‘I’ve told you once already, love doesn’t exist,’ he reiterated annoyingly.
‘Forget it, Mark,’ I said. ‘And don’t go blabbing what I just said to anybody else. It’s a private conversation between you and me.’
‘A woman’s come into Toby’s shop and he’s been smitten,’ Mark said.
My cutlery clattered against my plate and I glanced across the dinner table at him. I gave him my best if-looks-could-kill glower. ‘That’s so untrue,’ I said, swallowing my food.
‘Love at first sight? How romantic!’ said Sharon. ‘Isn’t that romantic, Joseph?’ she said, nudging her husband. He grunted something. ‘Do you know her name?’ she pursued.
Sharon Boothman was what you’d call homely. Tending towards the plump, too-dark hair out of a bottle, a permanent saccharin-sweet smile on her painted lips, ever ready to engage in unimportant tittle-tattle with anyone, ready to plump up her guests’ cushions and always armed with a full kettle, she was the archetypal hotel landlady, I thought, and had found her true vocation.
Her husband was the polar opposite. Aloof to the point of being intolerant, his hair was long, scraped back from his creased forehead and tied in a ponytail. He wore a black sweatshirt bearing the words Throw the Game in faded grey letters. I assumed it to be the name of a band I’d never heard of. Perhaps one of those he managed. His interactions with hotel guests were necessarily limited and largely left to his wife and the part-time help they employed. He took care of the finances and practicalities. It seemed a very old-fashioned relationship founded on what I thought were outdated gender clichés. But who was I to argue? It appeared to work for them.
‘He doesn’t know her name,’ Mark said. ‘She’s an unknown woman. A complete stranger.’
‘How sweet!’ said Sharon. ‘Is that true?’ she asked me.
‘I don’t know her name…’ I faltered.
‘You have to find out,’ she insisted. ‘I remember when we first met. Do you remember, Joseph?’
‘How can I forget?’ he said. ‘You won’t let me.’
‘Is that one of the bands you manage?’ I blurted, aiming my knife at Joseph’s sweatshirt and hoping to deflect the conversation. I swore I’d kill Mark for that loose mouth of him, and I’d never go out to dinner with him again.
Joseph looked down at his sweatshirt. ‘As if,’ he said. ‘Don’t you know them?’
I shook my head. ‘Are they famous?’
Joseph rolled his eyes. ‘Are you kidding me?’
‘He’s kidding you,’ Mark interjected on my behalf. ‘So how’s show business, Joe?’
The two men eyed each other up over a casserole dish of cold cauliflower and I saw the children they’d once been rise to the surface. ‘My bands are doing OK,’ said Joseph. He scrutinised his brother’s eyes for signs of mocking. ‘Got one of them coming over to Dorset to play the local pubs. Right up your street, a 70s-style band called Glory Daze. You should go listen to them. You might actually enjoy yourself.’
‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘If my ears will take it. You spend a lot of time with them, don’t you, Joe. Your boys.’
‘It’s a business,’ he returned.
‘Yeah, it’s a business,’ said Mark. ‘Music business good, is it? Giving a good return?’
‘I do OK.’
I could sense the atmosphere frosting over.
‘Yeah, I know you do,’ said Mark.
The two men eyed each other, and neither was going to let the other one off the hook.
‘How’s the hotel business, Sharon?’ I said, taking my turn to deflect things. I thought it had started to get a little he
ated. There was definitely something brewing beneath the surface with the brothers. It had been strained all night.
‘We get some decent groupies there, Mark,’ Joseph continued. ‘I know how much you like your groupies…’
‘Can it, Joe,’ Mark said, averting his eyes and staring at his plate. He set his cutlery down. ‘You want to talk about groupies, Joe? Let’s talk about groupies.’
‘You’ve had too much to drink, Mark,’ he said. ‘You always have too much to drink.’
‘You know how it is, some people drink to forget. Except no matter how much I drink I can’t seem to do that.’ He tapped his temple. ‘I can’t forget, Joe. I’m never going to forget, not until things are put right. And I’m going to do just that.’ He stared hard at Joseph.
‘The hotel business is slow, Toby,’ said Sharon brightly. ‘But we do our best. The bad summer we’ve had hasn’t helped. But we’re getting quite a few bookings for the Christmas holidays.’
Joseph pushed away his chair. ‘I need a pee,’ he said and stomped away.
I watched Mark scrutinising his brother’s back with a fiery intensity, and then he too got up. ‘I need to take some air,’ he said. ‘Go outside and have a fag.’
‘You haven’t had dessert,’ Sharon said, her face falling. ‘It’s apple crumble…’
‘I’m fine,’ he said, walking out of the room. We heard the French doors slide open and felt a blast of cold night air.
Sharon and I sat in silence for a while. ‘I’m sorry…’ I said, as if their behaviour had been my responsibility.
‘Oh, it’s not your fault,’ she said, sighing and looking at the half-eaten food. ‘I tried, but they just don’t hit it off.’
I frowned. ‘What’s behind it all?’
‘I was going to ask you that,’ she replied. ‘He’s been acting strange these last few months. Have you noticed it?’
‘A little,’ I said.
‘Do you know what it could be?’
I said I didn’t.
‘Maybe it’s the girl…’ she said quietly.
The D.M. Mitchell Supernatural Double bill Page 24
