by Oliver Tidy
Unhappy Families
The Sixth Romney and Marsh File
Oliver Tidy
Copyright 2015 Oliver Tidy
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This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please download an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you.
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any persons without the permission of the author.
Oliver Tidy has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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The Romney and Marsh Files now number six. They don’t have to be read in order; they do all work as stand-alone novels. However, to get the most out of each it is recommended that they are consumed in the order in which they were prepared, a bit like the courses of a good meal. (Who wants to eat ice-cream before a bowl of soup?)
Here are the books of the series in order with their Amazon UK & US links.
#1 Rope Enough Amazon UK Amazon US
#2 Making a Killing Amazon UK Amazon US
#3 Joint Enterprise Amazon UK Amazon US
#4 A Dog’s Life Amazon UK Amazon US
#5 Particular Stupidities Amazon UK Amazon US
#6 Unhappy Families Amazon UK Amazon US
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Table of Contents
Chapter1 Chapter2 Chapter3 Chapter4 Chapter5 Chapter6 Chapter7 Chapter8 Chapter9 Chapter10 Chapter11 Chapter12 Chapter13 Chapter14 Chapter15 Chapter16 Chapter17 Chapter18 Chapter19 Chapter20 Chapter21 Chapter22 Chapter23 Chapter24 Chapter25 Chapter26 Chapter27 Chapter28 Chapter29 Chapter30 Chapter31 Chapter32 Chapter33 Chapter34 Chapter35 Chapter36 Chapter37 Chapter38 Chapter39 Chapter40 Chapter41 Chapter42 Chapter43 Chapter44 Chapter45 Chapter46 Chapter47 Chapter48 Chapter49 Chapter50 Chapter51 Chapter52 Chapter53 Chapter54 Chapter55 Chapter56 Chapter57
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Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
(Opening line of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.)
1
Holding his hand in a vice-like grip, she led him over the frozen ground. As they hurried along the artery of shadow, only shards of fractured moonlight falling between the trees, like fragments of a broken mirror, provided a suggestion of their way. In just his pyjamas, the sweat of his exertions chilled his body and scalp.
He wanted to stop and listen, to peer backwards into the darkness, to know whether they were being pursued.
‘How far?’ he panted.
‘Not long now. Quickly.’
He faltered and felt her strength. She slowed her pace and he was grateful.
She twitched her head from side to side, searching. Their breath plumed white in the moonlit stillness.
‘Are we lost?’
‘No. This way.’
She yanked him after her. They left the path to plunge deeper into denser forest. He stumbled over fallen branches as they pushed through years of undergrowth and clawing tree limbs.
Without warning, they burst into a small clearing. The cut grass was bathed in silver light, like a stage. He took in the jumble of ancient weathered gravestones: the upright, the leaning and the fallen; large and small, plain and ornate.
‘Where are we?’ he said.
‘Over here. Hurry.’
Still clutching his hand, she led him between the tablets of the dead until they came to a freshly dug pit, the spoil piled high to one side.
Dropping his hand, she pointed to the wound in the earth. ‘There.’
He stepped to the edge and looked down into the shallow grave. The unfettered moonlight laid the contents bare in clear and bas-relief. His breath caught in his throat.
Resting at the bottom of the hole, cocooned in clear plastic sheeting, lay an enormously fat body. In the blurred features, the mouth gaped wide, as if gasping for air.
Horrified and confused, he turned to her just as the shovel she was wielding swung through the final degrees of its arc to strike the hour flat on the top of his head. The resounding clang echoed around the little theatre. His knees buckled. He toppled to his left. Into the hole. Onto the body.
He was aware of dirt being shovelled on top of him, fast and frenzied spits of loamy soil coming down like hail. He struggled to open his eyes, to regain his senses. Limbs like lead.
He opened his mouth to cry out and it filled with mud. He choked and gagged and spluttered.
The weight of the earth increased, pinning him, constricting his breathing.
The shovelling stopped. He blinked open his eyes. She stood at the edge of the hole, backlit by the moon, looking down at him. Her chest heaved. The breath steamed out of her.
She smiled – a flash of white in her otherwise darkened features.
She raised the shovel high once more – the pointed blade caught the moon’s dull glow – and sprang. She landed on his chest, forcing the remaining air from his lungs in one loud expulsion. Combining gravity, momentum and all her strength, she plunged the tempered steel into the fleshy softness of his neck, all but severing his head with one final mortal blow.
Detective Inspector Tom Romney shot bolt upright in his bed. His hands went to his throat, feeling for the gaping wound to stem the flow of blood, before he understood.
Breathing ragged, pyjamas damp with sweat, his body sagged with relief. He slumped back onto his pillows to stare wide-eyed and terrified at the plain ceiling of his bedroom. Staring back at him was the grinning face of Julie Carpenter.
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2
Romney made final checks in the full-length mirror of his bedroom wardrobe. He believed the black, slim-fit suit, white shirt with English spread collar and black knitted tie combined, from the neck down at least, to give him a Connery-in-his-Bond-prime look. Maybe Connery-in-his-just-past-his-Bond-prime look. Still good. Better than a lot of younger men.
The suit, while not new, was in excellent condition. It had been an impulse and hopeful purchase. Something he’d bought in the sales. He’d worn it once and it hadn’t felt entirely comfortable – too tight under the arms, across the shoulders and hips. For years it had hung at the end of the wardrobe rail in a sealed bag, a constant reminder every time he went looking for something to wear of the promise he’d made himself: that one day he’d get back into it and be able to do up all the buttons and still breathe normally and be able to sit down without fear of splitting a seam. That he was now staring at himself wearing it should have made him happier than it did. But it was not a day that he felt entitled to be happy.
The unwanted extra kilos – a result of becoming physically lazy, grazing too often on unhealthy snacks in front of the TV, drinking too much beer and wine, and the slowing down of his body’s metabolism as he crossed over into the wrong side of middle-age – had been hard to shift. But thanks to a programme of dedicated and regular exercise tailored to his needs at a local gym, combined with a healthier and rigorously enforced diet, he’d managed it.
The weight loss pleased him. However, it had had a pronounced and unwelcome effect on his face. The whole of it seemed to have sagged like the upholstery of an old sofa, the skin around and under the eyes and the jaw in particular. He was looking jowly. No matter how many minutes of facial exercises he did, he couldn’t seem to tight
en it up, get rid of the slack. It bothered him enough to have Googled cosmetic surgery for men. Only Googled it.
The events and emotional fallout of recent months, which had prompted the see-sawing of his lifestyle changes, had also had an effect on his mental health. He’d suffered regular bouts of abyss-contemplating depression, during which he hadn’t left the sofa for whole weekends.
He’d got privately, morosely and very drunk once. When he’d sobered up and stopped throwing up, he’d gone through the cupboards hunting out anything stronger than orange squash and poured it all down the sink. Now, as well as exercising hard and regularly, and eating healthily, Detective Inspector Romney was on the wagon. He was also in his third week of not smoking. And he was back talking to Doctor Puchta – the head-doctor – once a week as a very private patient.
Despite trying to avoid them, his eyes locked with those of his reflection. It was like looking into the eyes of a troubled stranger: literally someone he didn’t know. He could detect the barely suppressed anger and resentment still festering, the damage done. But perhaps that’s just because he knew it was there. He was not tempted to smile at himself. Realising that it was up to him, the real him, to break the trance, he blinked and looked away. He inhaled deeply and let it out slowly, then crossed to the window to watch the rain lash the countryside while the wind bullied the trees.
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3
Romney arrived at Connaught cemetery early to ensure a parking space. He had no idea how many would be attending but he expected a decent turnout despite the weather. Pulling into the otherwise-deserted place, he frowned and for a moment worried that he’d got the wrong day. He checked the date and the time from the piece of paper he’d scribbled it on when he’d received the phone call inviting him to attend, and was reassured. But the lack of vehicles and mourners continued to concern him.
As he deliberated whether to make some enquiries, staring out of the rain-spattered windscreen with the wipers thumping left and right, a memory was unlocked. He remembered vividly a similar wet and gloomy day a few years before when he had come to watch a pretty and brave young woman put into the ground. She had fallen to her death from a Dover balcony. Romney had strongly suspected the involvement of her boyfriend, a local scumbag. But he’d never been able to prove it and the CPS had declined to take the case forward based only on Romney’s suspicions and the barely circumstantial evidence. Avery, the scumbag, had not broken under questioning. He had stuck to his story that he hadn’t been there and argued that she must have jumped as the full weight of the rape and follow-up terrorisation by mobile phone she’d recently suffered had tipped her over the edge of reason and then the balcony.
Romney spared Claire Stamp a thought as he watched the dead leaves hurrying this way and that, like energetic little sprites that couldn’t make up their minds which way to go. He wondered what she looked like now. Her attractive face rotted away to the bone. The creepy-crawlies of the soil worming their ordinary ways in and out of her skull. He swallowed and blinked hard at the disconcerting clarity of the images.
His morose reverie was interrupted by the sight of a hearse making its lumbering way through the cemetery gate. It was followed by four cars containing varying numbers of passengers. Romney wiped the condensation from the driver’s door window. He saw the blank, sun-starved faces of those who had come to pay their final respects staring vacantly back at him wondering the same things he was: ‘Who is that? What was the dead man to him?’
Romney waited until everyone else was out of their cars, overcoated, hatted, wrestling with their umbrellas and moving along before getting out himself and shrugging on his Crombie. Because not trying would guarantee his return to the car soaked through, he put up his own umbrella and prepared to do battle with the elements.
The hearse had reversed as far as it was possible to go. Romney understood why. This was going to be no easy carry for four strong men. Not on wet and spongy turf in wind and rain and with the body mass of the deceased. Romney deliberately held back in case they started searching the mourners for strong backs to help. He wanted to be here, to pay his respects, but he didn’t want to be involved further than that.
The rain continued to lash the field of the dead in great sweeps. The wind, which had risen in pitch and force to become almost a gale, whipped and wailed through the bare branches of the mature plane trees, creating a fitting cacophony of lament for the passing of one of Dover’s sons.
Using two hands, Romney angled his brolly into the face of it. He saw one black hat tipped off an old woman’s head by invisible fingers to fall into a big, dirty puddle. Another woman was quickly relieved of her headgear. Her freed artificially red hair was encouraged to stand up in the wind, reminding Romney of the flame of an Olympic torch. Umbrellas were turned inside out and unsecured black coats fluttered and flapped like the wings of great bats.
A middle-aged man was persuaded to tiptoe into the water to retrieve the hat that floated like some ugly black duckling in the centre of what was looking more like a small pond. Romney saw that despite his efforts the water lapped over both the man’s shoes. The man swore loudly. But he retrieved the hat and handed it back to the woman. She took one look at it and threw it in the nearest bin.
A young boy had chased the second hat, which the wind had caught and was playfully rolling across the open ground, gathering momentum towards the hedge on the far side of the car park. The boy was clearly enjoying the chase. He smiled broadly and his laugh carried back to them. Over thirty yards, the lad was no match for the elements. But he caught up with it when it became wedged in the hedge with the carrier bags and crisp packets and empty plastic bottles. He retrieved it and waved it in the air like a prize.
The single rear door of the hearse was lifted and the coffin slid out. The bearers exchanged meaningful and apprehensive looks before counting one, two, three and grunting with the effort of hoisting the solid-looking highly polished box with brass fittings onto their shoulders.
There were irritable calls to get the stupid, oblivious and dithering grievers out of the way and good-natured calls of encouragement from someone for the pallbearers as they cautiously began to make their way to the dead man’s final resting place.
Romney brought up the rear of the pack of monochrome mourners as they picked and slipped their way after the casket making its laboured journey across the uneven turf on eight straining legs like a fat, awkward spider.
Romney counted only eighteen people other than him. The low number saddened him. Probably the weather had not helped, he thought, which then made him think that those who had braved the elements must have good reasons to be there. He wondered how many would turn out to see him erased from the face of the planet in his planned cremation when the time came. The mental exercise did nothing to cheer him.
He slowed his pace so as to not catch up with the contingent, thereby risking interaction with anyone. That was not why he was there.
Romney became aware of someone at his side. He tipped his umbrella slightly to get a better look at them. She was alone. She wore a black raincoat with the collar turned up and the belt tied carelessly at her narrow waist. She had sensible shoes on small feet. On her head sat a black beret at a jaunty angle, which suited her fine and well-proportioned features perfectly. A trimming of chestnut hair poked out beneath it. A slash of crimson lipstick clashed violently with her pale skin, her surroundings and the occasion. Romney thought of The French Resistance. He hadn’t seen her arrive. But then he’d been rather focussed on other things, like hanging on to his umbrella and keeping out of the way.
She turned to look at him. Despite feeling immediately uncomfortable for being caught staring, Romney was unable to look away from the intensity of her gaze. She held his stare for just a second longer than she might have before smiling tightly and turning back to look where she was treading.
In front of Romney, someone was making a fuss. He had not been looking where he was going and he’d trodden on the
heel of a slow old woman in front of him. Her shoe had come off. She was standing on one leg trying to get it back from where it had rolled into the flowerbed. Romney apologised and bent to retrieve it. As he did so, the angle of his umbrella altered and the wind filled it, whipped it inside out and into the face of the shoeless woman, nearly knocking her over. Romney apologised profusely but the wind took his words before they got close to their intended target.
He tried to fix his brolly while the woman, complaining loudly, worked her wet foot back into her wet shoe. He looked up for a sign of the woman in black. She had slipped into the throng.
Spying a mound of earth piled at the side of another hole in the ground awaiting the interment of its occupant, Romney was reminded of and disturbed by the memory of his dream. He felt a prickly sweat break out across his back and forehead. He wondered for a moment if there might be something portentous in his nightmares. Quickly dismissing the foolish notion, he chastised himself and carried on to the grave he was there for.
Standing almost shoulder to shoulder, they made a circle around the pit. A barrier of black backs. Romney hadn’t intended to get so close but someone had made room for him and he’d felt obliged to shuffle up and be counted. Besides, being in the circle would give him an opportunity to scan the others, to get another look at the woman of The Resistance, perhaps. He didn’t know why he wanted to do this because as well as giving up drinking and smoking he’d also sworn himself off women. It was, he’d decided, the only way to give him a hope of a full recovery from his recent personal devastation.
He saw her on the opposite side of the grave. She was staring down at the casket with a look Romney found hard to fathom. Was it sadness? Was it anger? Was it disgust? She wasn’t crying. Her mouth was set in a firm, hard, red line. As if sensing him again, she snapped her gaze up and this time he quickly looked away.
