Will the night always affect me so, I thought?
The loud noise and bright lights of the club banished my melancholic musings, or rather battered them out of existence. I could not recall the last time I went to a club. A birthday party for one of Trisha’s friends, I believe. I did not remember it being so loud or so crowded, but perhaps my mind was still sensitive to such things, I thought. We made our way to a table on an upper balcony that overlooked the stage and a large dance floor filled with people enjoying the booming music. Trisha was eager to dance, and in spite of her energetic pleading, I let her go alone to the dance floor. She was soon lost to the flashing lights and press of writhing bodies. The loud music pounded in my ears, a mix of 70s rock and dance music. I noticed many of the dancers were dressed in 1970s gear, too, and it felt faintly disconcerting, as if I’d travelled back in time and was looking down on the word as it once was.
Presently, to wild boozy cheering, Glory Daze stepped onto the stage, a four-piece rock group comprising a drummer, a bassist and two rhythm/lead guitarists. They launched immediately into their first number, one of their own it seemed, a prog rock-style piece laced through with elements of Yes, King Crimson and Rush. The fans in the audience obviously loved it, for there were loud whoops and cheers and screams for more, which they duly delivered.
The members of Glory Daze weren’t all young, I noticed. Two of them looked to be in their late thirties, early forties – the keyboard player and the drummer. But they were giving it all they had, and the energy they expended made me feel positively catatonic.
An hour or so passed. Went by in a blur. It was as I was lazily scanning the crowd looking for Trisha that I saw Madeline.
I could not believe it. I stood up from the table, gripped the chrome handrail of the balcony and leant over. I even remember rubbing my eyes, because it just couldn’t be so.
Yet there she was, with her blonde hair, brown jacket and long flowered skirt, exactly as she appeared to me all those times. There was Madeline, on the dance floor at the edge of the surging crowd of people. But I refused to believe. The young woman looked up in my direction, and for one brief moment as the lights played over her upturned face, I had no doubt that it was her. It was the woman I loved. She hadn’t left me after all.
I waved at her, madly, called out her name, but my shout was lost in the fury of sound from the group on stage. She appeared not to notice me, almost looked through me, and then her attention was back on the group.
I dashed away from the balcony, pounded down the stairs and onto the perimeter of the dance floor. I peered through the wall of bodies and made out her familiar form just beginning to thread its way into the crowd.
‘Madeline!’ I screamed. I waved for all I was worth. ‘Madeline! Wait!’
But the crowd had swallowed her up. I raced to the spot I’d last seen her, searched frantically but could not find her. I pushed through the crowd, causing some resentment as I did so, mindless of who exactly I was barging out of the way in my attempt to locate her.
Like a swimmer looking for someone lost in strong currents I swivelled my head this way and that, battling against the press of bodies, but I could not see her. My heart sank.
Had I imagined it? Was I still so far gone I was imagining her now?
No, she had been there. She was still here, lost somewhere amongst the swaying crowd and I just had to find her.
I found Trisha instead.
She frowned at my wild expression and yelled into my ear, ‘Are you all right?’
I nodded, but continued searching all the same. ‘Have you seen a woman?’ I yelled back.
She shook her head, not understanding or not hearing. ‘Blonde hair, brown jacket…’ I waved my hand at her. ‘Never mind!’
She grabbed my arm and dragged me to the side. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for someone.’
‘Who?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said impatiently.
‘Forget that. I’m going backstage when they’ve finished – do you want to come with me?’
I looked at her, not really comprehending. ‘What?’
‘I’ve got passes, remember? I’m going backstage to see Glory Daze, are you coming?’
‘No, I’m not in the mood.’
Her face darkened. ‘You never are, Toby.’
‘That’s why you dumped me, isn’t it? I haven’t got time to go backstage and see a load of failed wannabes regurgitating prog rock crap. I’ve got to find her.’
‘Find who?’
‘Madeline.’
‘Who the hell’s Madeline?’ But with an exasperated sigh she brushed by me. ‘Forget it, it doesn’t matter. I’m not interested. If you can’t enjoy yourself just the once, Toby, you’re heading for trouble.’
‘Give it a rest, Trisha,’ I said, my mind elsewhere.
‘I’m trying to cheer you up,’ she said.
‘Why don’t you just go away and leave me alone, Trisha? I don’t need your help. You’re only doing this to make yourself feel better about things. All you care about is having a good time.’
‘Fine. You do what you want. Don’t bother waiting around for me; I’ll get a taxi back home.’
‘If that’s what you want,’ I said. ‘What do I care?’
She pulled a face and dashed off into the crowd just as Glory Daze were finishing their last number. I instantly regretted what I’d said to her. I was being an insufferable arsehole and I knew it. I called out her name as she tore angrily away, but she chose not to hear or didn’t hear, and I lost her among the jiggling dancers.
You bloody selfish craphead, I thought. Now look what you’ve done. You can’t take things out on Trisha, in heaven’s name. It’s not her fault. It was Farnham’s. Farnham was supposed to have got rid of Madeline. I was supposed to be getting over her. It wasn’t right. It just wasn’t right!
I must have looked a pretty awful sight, standing there looking lost, confused and desperate, particularly as the band had concluded and people started to melt away to the edges of the dance floor and back to their tables and the bars for drinks. I hung around, somehow hoping I’d catch a glimpse of Madeline, but she didn’t appear again.
The person I did see, though, was Mark Boothman. I was surprised. I hadn’t expected my friend to be at the club, too. He was standing by the balcony on the upper floor. Standing and staring down gravely onto the dance floor, much as I had done earlier.
My mind in a whirl I turned to dash up the stairs, and ran immediately into a couple of blokes and their girlfriends coming in the opposite direction. I accidentally crashed headlong into them, their drinks flying everywhere. One of the women gave a little scream as she was sprayed with alcohol, and someone in the shadows started to guffaw at the incident.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, instinctively reaching out to help one of the women.
The next thing I knew I was beaten about the face with a steel-hard fist, vaguely aware of one of the men telling me I’d barged into him and his girl once too often. I fell onto the stairs, cracked my knee against the hard surface, lost my balance and tumbled downwards head over heels, receiving a sharp kick or two in my side as the two men followed me down. Lying in a breathless, crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs they started to lay into me, the last thing I heard being the smashing of glass as a bottle hit me across the head.
The pain rushed in. Thankfully not for long, because I blacked out.
18
Later
I came to in casualty, lying in a hospital bed. A doctor was tapping the side of my face.
‘Mr Turner. Mr Turner. Can you hear me?’
I nodded and razor blades sliced across my skull. ‘What happened,’ I said groggily.
‘You’ve been hit over the head. You’ve had a few stitches.’ He stared intently into my eyes, his hand cradling my chin. He flashed a light into my eyes, asked me to follow a finger, asked me if I knew my first name, address, things like th
at. I remember answering in a daze. He stood back. ‘We’ll keep you under observation for a few hours,’ he said. ‘You may be concussed.’ The doctor turned to someone standing outside the thin blue curtain. ‘You can see him now. You’ve got two minutes,’ he said firmly.
Mark Boothman came through the gap in the curtain, closed it behind him. He stood by the bed and looked down at me, his arms folded.
‘The trouble with you is that you can’t hold your drink. Always getting into fights…’
I blinked stupidly. Happened to glance down at my shirt. It was lathered in blood. ‘Jesus!’ I gasped. ‘Is that all mine?’
Mark came close, glancing back over his shoulder as he did so. When he spoke, his voice was hushed, urgent. ‘Listen, I haven’t got long…’
‘Where have you been?’ I asked, my head afire and causing me to grimace. ‘I’ve been calling you…’
‘Keep quiet, Toby, and just listen.’
‘Are you in some kind of trouble?’
‘Maybe. Possibly. Yeah, I am.’
‘I can help,’ I said. ‘I’m your friend.’
‘That’s what I’m here for, if you’ll just keep your mouth shut.’ He was nervous, I could tell, on edge all the time. Every sound from beyond the curtain caused his head to dart. ‘I have to thank you, Toby. Without realising it you saved my bacon.’
‘What are you rambling on about, Mark? And where the hell Have you been all this time?’
‘I’ve been busy. More about that later. They were about to come for me. They were closing in. Your little altercation on the stairs probably saved my life.’
‘Who were closing in, Mark? You’re not making sense. Look, is this something to do with those missing girls?’
His face became deadly serious. ‘What do you know about that, Toby?’
I regretted saying it. I struggled for a way to explain how I knew without telling him I’d been snooping. ‘I know a little,’ I said vaguely. ‘So what have they got to do with tonight?’
‘I haven’t time for this, Toby. They’ll know which hospital you’ve been taken to and will probably guess I’ll try to get in and see you. They could be here for me at any time.’
‘Who, in heaven’s name? Who is after you?’
‘This is something you don’t want to be a part of, Toby. I know you’ve been sniffing about, looking into who that murdered woman was you found on the beach. They know, too. What they don’t know is how much you know. Let’s keep it at that and maybe you’ll stay safe. God, Toby, why did you have to go meddling?’
‘What the devil has the woman I found on the beach got to do with those missing young women? The body I found was killed thirty-five years ago.’
‘Forget everything you know about that, Toby, for the good of your health. You think Steely Jacob’s death was an accident or suicide? Do you want to end up the same way?’
‘Are you saying he was murdered?’
‘Keep your voice down! Yes, he was murdered.’
‘Go to the police.’
‘No!’ he said, his eyes narrowing. ‘And neither will you, not yet. Promise me you’ll not do anything yet. Promise me, damn you!’
I nodded slowly. ‘He was murdered?’ I repeated, shocked. ‘Who did it?’
‘The same guys who are after me, and they’ll come after you if they think you know more than you should. Someone at the club must have spotted you in the crowd. They’d been keeping an eye on you and what you’ve been up to. They saw me at the club and were about to make their move on me. I only became aware of them when your little fracas exploded. They tried to corner me, but they were hindered by all the excitement caused by your fight, and I managed to slip away through the crowd and out of the club the back way. So I owe you a big one.’
‘What’s going on, Mark? I don’t understand…’
‘I know what’s happened to those missing girls, and it’s wrapped up with who killed my girlfriend, Toby,’ he said gravely.
‘Is that what all this is about, Mark? Listen, if you’ve gotten into something too big for you…’
‘Hold your tongue, Toby. Just for once. I’ve been working with a private detective, a woman called Carol. She was at the club tonight. She’s working undercover with me to try and get enough information to nail them. Except I think they’ve got her.’
‘The same dark-haired woman who visited Steely and Chester?’
‘The same. I need you to do me a big favour. You’re going to get a parcel from me in a few days. I need you to hang onto it for me. Don’t open it.’
‘What’s in it?’
‘Don’t open it, OK? Save it for me. I don’t want it falling into their hands.’
‘You haven’t told me what’s in the parcel.’
‘That’s not for you to know.’
‘OK, forget the parcel for now. So what about this woman, Carol? You say she’s in some kind of danger?’
‘They don’t know who she is yet, I’m sure of that. Haven’t connected her to me or she’d probably be dead already. They have her and I need to help her. And I need to kill the bastard who murdered my girlfriend.’
‘Mark! Is that why you’re not going to the police? You want to kill someone? That’s just not you talking!’
‘I loved her, Toby. Though you’ll never know what that really feels like. She was my life. She was taken from me, and I’m determined that he’ll pay for it.’
‘Who is it, Mark, tell me?’
‘I can’t, not yet. But I need another big favour from you.’
I nodded. ‘Ask away.’
‘As a friend…’
‘As a friend…’
‘If anything happens to me, you’ve got to help Carol. I got her into this.’
‘I’ll try, but…’ This was madness, I thought, and my blazing headache wasn’t helping matters any. I couldn’t think straight.
Mark looked about to cry, his eyes welling up. ‘Toby, he needs to pay for everything he’s done. They all need to pay.’
‘And the police are the ones to carry that out,’ I said.
‘They won’t. It will happen again and again…’
‘What will happen?’
Strangely, he smiled warmly. ‘You’ve been a good friend, Toby,’ he said. ‘I know you’ll do the right thing by me.’
The doctor swiped the curtain back. ‘Time’s over,’ he said flatly. ‘Let the man rest up a bit.’
Mark backed away from the bed. ‘Remember what I told you,’ he said, and with that he disappeared through the curtain.
‘Mark!’ I called, trying to get out of bed. I felt extremely dizzy and it forced me back down to my pillow with a groan. ‘I’ve got to talk to him,’ I said.
‘Later,’ said the doctor. ‘There’ll be plenty of time later.’
Except there wasn’t to be plenty of time.
Three days later, Mark was found dead.
19
Very Much Alive
Mark had hung himself from his Georgian banister by a cord from one of his antique drapes. There was a suicide note in his pocket, typed up on the morning of his death on his computer, along with clear evidence to prove that he was in considerable debt to various loan sharks, and that he’d been taking a course of anti-depressants for some time.
I was devastated. It was as if I’d been hit square on by a speeding cannon ball; the news took the legs out from under me, and I remember collapsing to the floor and dropping the phone when Mark’s sister-in-law Sharon rang up to tell me.
‘He said his life was in danger,’ I blurted through my tears.
‘He was being hounded by a number of loan sharks, and let’s say they were not the kind of people you’d want to mess with. His financial affairs were in a real mess. For some reason he’d been letting his business slide. Why he never came to us to talk about it, I’ll never know,’ she said sadly. ‘We were family.’
‘He told me he knew who murdered his girlfriend,’ I said.
There was silence for a moment
or two at the other end of the phone. ‘Toby, there’re still some things we haven’t told you about Mark. He’s been saying those kinds of things for years. He’s pointed the finger at half a dozen individuals, which has at times been really embarrassing and might have caused us some trouble if Joseph hadn’t been able to step in and smooth things over. You can’t go around accusing people of murder like that. But he was obsessed. Obsessed with his dead girlfriend. He was ill, Toby. Very ill for a very long time. He became worse as he got older, and I think he never quite knew what was real and what was fantasy anymore. The list of missing girls, that kind of thing, was all part of a fantasy he created. I suppose it made him feel he was doing something positive to find out who murdered his girlfriend.’
I couldn’t talk further that day. I hung up and collapsed into a blubbering, grief stricken heap. I should have recognised the signs. I’d experienced a similar madness.
I visited the Bay Hotel the next day. It was closed for business, the curtains drawn. Joseph Boothman was a total wreck, sitting in the gloom in an armchair with his head in his hands the entire time I was there. His eyes were rimmed red, his clothes a rumpled mess. He barely spoke two words to me.
‘He’s taken it really bad,’ said Sharon. ‘They didn’t get on but they were still brothers at the end of the day. He feels he should have been able to do something to help Mark. We both do.’
I admitted that I hadn’t read the signs, which were as clear as day to me now.
I said, ‘Mark spoke about a private detective, a woman called Carol. He said she was in danger.’
Sharon smiled at me in that understanding way she possessed. ‘He’s supposedly been working with this Carol for years. She doesn’t exist. She never has.’
‘Are you sure? He sounded so worked up over her…’
She shook her head. ‘To Mark everything was real, and he made it seem real for you. The truth is he made her up. A private detective? It’s the stuff of fiction, Toby. It all is. And that’s just what it was in the end. Pure fiction. You see, Carol was the name of his dead girlfriend.’
The D.M. Mitchell Supernatural Double bill Page 35
