Blind to the Bones

by Stephen Booth

  33

  The door of the double garage hummed as it rose and slid into place in the roof. Diane Fry looked at the number plate of the Audi parked next to the Renshaws’ Volvo Estate.

  ‘I thought you said this car was two years old, Mrs Renshaw?’

  Sarah Renshaw looked confused and shook her head, as if she didn’t understand what she was being asked. Fry turned to Howard instead.

  ‘It’s a “T” registration,’ she said. ‘That means it was registered in 1999.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it isn’t two years old.’

  ‘Well, it was …’

  ‘Of course it was,’ said Fry, irritated to have been given wrong information. ‘But it isn’t now, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Howard, and began to flush slightly.

  Fry stared at him, wondering what was wrong with the man. He wasn’t ignorant about cars, and he had bought this one himself. Very few men would have got the age of a vehicle so wrong – especially when the registration system had been changed very recently. Now, the year of a car’s registration was identified by numbers on its plate, instead of the old system of letters, which had ended with ‘Y’.

  ‘This car is “T” registration,’ she repeated. ‘It’s at least four years old, Mr Renshaw.’

  She waited for Renshaw to explain himself, but he didn’t seem to want to. He simply looked at the Audi with that pitiful, hangdog expression she had seen before. Then Fry realized the problem. The car had been two years old. It had been two years old when Emma Renshaw disappeared. In the minds of her parents, the car was still the same age, just as Emma was still on her way home from Wolverhampton. Those two years in between might as well not have existed.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Howard.

  But Fry couldn’t tell whether he was actually apologizing for his behaviour, or simply hadn’t understood what she meant. It was her own fault, anyway – she should have checked before now, instead of taking what the Renshaws said as the truth.

  ‘When did Emma last drive this car?’ she said.

  ‘She only uses it when she’s home from university.’

  Fry gritted her teeth, trying to stay calm.

  ‘Mr Renshaw, your daughter hasn’t been home from university for over two years. When did she last use this car?’

  She saw his adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. He was starting to sweat a little. ‘It would have been the Christmas holiday,’ he said. ‘Emma was at home for three weeks, over Christmas and New Year. We had a proper family Christmas together, just the three of us on Christmas Day. But she went out with some friends on Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve. She used the car then, I think.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I took a lot of trouble over Christmas dinner,’ said Sarah. ‘We spent weeks doing the tree and the decorations, and months buying the presents. We bought Emma a lot of presents that Christmas. I think it was because she was away from us most of the year, we felt we had to make more effort to show her how much we loved her when she was at home. Perhaps we spoiled Emma a bit, I don’t know. But I’m glad we did it. It was the last time. The last Christmas we saw her.’

  Listening to Mrs Renshaw’s voice growing quieter and quieter in the half-empty garage, Fry began to feel guilty for her impatience and irritation. She felt as though she had trampled on the Renshaws’ dreams by pointing out the fact that it was over two years since they had seen their daughter.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Renshaw,’ she said. She knew it wasn’t enough, not by any means. But she couldn’t think of anything else to say to her.

  A silence developed between them as Fry examined the car.

  ‘Of course, there’ll be even more presents for Emma next Christmas,’ said Sarah.

  And now her voice had life in it again. There was a rising note of optimism at the end of her sentence that sent a shiver through Fry’s spine.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve saved them all for her, of course,’ said Sarah. ‘The spare room is full of them. Emma will have such a surprise next Christmas. She won’t want to go away again when she sees how much we love her.’

  Fry stared at Sarah Renshaw until she couldn’t bear to look at her any longer. It was like watching someone trying to get up and walk after their legs had been blown off – and smiling hopefully as they did it. The sight was too painful to prolong, and Fry turned away.

  ‘Mr Renshaw, do you have the keys for this car?’ she said.

  They were squatting uncomfortably on seats that had been ripped out of some derelict car. At least, Derek Alton hoped that it had been derelict before the seats were ripped out. The seats were tied to the struts of the van sides with their seat belts, which kept them fairly stable except when the van went round a bend, and then they tended to slide and crash into each other. Alton had been thrown against one of the seat-belt buckles, and now he had a pain in his shoulder, which he knew would be a nasty bruise by tomorrow morning. He bruised very easily. His mother had always told him that when he was a child.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Alton.

  ‘Practice session, Vicar.’

  Alton looked round at the rest of the Border Rats. Directly across from him was Scott Oxley, with his brother Ryan. On either side of him were Sean and Glen, and two Hey Bridge men he didn’t know were squashed together at the front, just behind the driver’s cab, where Eric rode alongside his son. All the team were in full kit, with their top hats and their black make-up and mirrored sunglasses, carrying their sticks and, in some cases, bottles of beer.

  ‘How old are you, Ryan?’ said Alton. ‘I can’t quite remember.’

  ‘Eighteen, Vicar.’

  ‘And how old is young Sean here?’

  ‘Eighteen, Vicar.’

  ‘I see.’

  The interior of the van smelled strongly of theatrical paint and sweat, and leather boots, along with the beer that the younger ones occasionally spilled on their trousers or on the floor of the van, which was covered with an old carpet. Alton looked down at the carpet suspiciously. It seemed to be embedded with small pieces of coal and splinters of wood. He wondered what Lucas Oxley normally used the van for when it wasn’t serving as the team bus. For a moment, he also wondered whether it was legal – but he put the thought hastily out of his mind as unworthy. It was just that he had never known what Lucas did for a living. Or any of the Oxleys, come to that.

  They bumped up a hill and round a few more bends before descending again. There was a steel grille between the body of the van and the driver’s cab, and Alton wouldn’t have been able to see where they were going, even if he had taken his sunglasses off, which he didn’t like to do, because all the others were wearing theirs. He very much wanted to be part of the side, to do whatever they did. Almost whatever. When Scott wiped the neck of his beer bottle and offered it to him, he managed to refuse.

  ‘Yes, it’s probably best not to, if you’re a bit nervous, Vicar,’ said Scott.

  ‘There’s nothing to be nervous about really,’ said Alton. ‘I know the dance perfectly.’

  But he could hear the tremble in his own voice, so he didn’t expect Scott or any of the others to be in the least convinced. They all looked at him and smiled. He hoped they were sympathetic smiles, but their mirrored sunglasses made it impossible for him to see the look in their eyes, to tell whether they were mocking him.

  ‘Where did you say we’re going?’ asked Alton again.

  ‘To bring a bit of fertility to our neighbours.’

  The others laughed and cheered. Scott Oxley stared steadily at the vicar.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘some of them actually believe this fertility stuff. There are women who come to watch us on May Day, then turn up again the following year clutching a baby and telling us we were responsible for her getting pregnant.’

  ‘Aye, but those are all the birds that Scott’s shagged,’ said Ryan. ‘Only they can’t tell which of us it was becaus
e of the black faces, see.’

  Scott continued as if his brother hadn’t spoken. ‘Fertility ritual! I mean, can you credit some folk? It only ever started off as a joke, to keep people in the crowd amused. You hear Fools talking it up around some sides, but it’s only like having a comedian making a few rude jokes, isn’t it? Why has anyone ever taken that stuff seriously?’

  ‘Here we are!’ called Lucas from the cab at last. ‘Let the band get started first, then go for it on the signal. And remember – you go out dancing! What do you say?’

  ‘Rats!’ the boys shouted, so loudly that they almost deafened Derek Alton. He came in late, only managed to mouth the word a beat behind the others, and felt ashamed that he had missed the cue. He swore that he’d get everything else right from now on.

  As soon as the van doors open and he clambered out after the others, Alton recognized the church, and realized they were in Tintwistle. Then it dawned on him why there was a crowd of spectators to greet them.

  ‘Oh my God. It’s the blessing of the wells. There’s the Rural Dean and the church choir, and the whole of the women’s institute, and … Oh Lord, what are they going to do?’

  Although it hadn’t been used by its owner for two years, the Audi was fully taxed. The disc inside the windscreen showed that its road fund licence didn’t run out until March 2004. Fry was willing to bet that its insurance cover had been renewed by the Renshaws, too. Everything was ready for the moment Emma returned. Or was it?

  ‘So you must have had it MoT’d,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  One look at Sarah Renshaw’s face made it obvious that the question hadn’t even occurred to her. But every vehicle had to go through an annual MoT test, once it was three years old.

  Fry looked at Howard. His expression was impassive, and she found she couldn’t read anything into his manner. But whatever the reason for his pretence, he was fully aware of the age of the car.

  Howard turned towards his wife, touching her arm gently.

  ‘I had that done a few months ago,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ But Sarah still looked as if she didn’t understand.

  Fry opened the driver’s door of the Audi. From inside the car wafted a strong scent she didn’t recognize at first. It seemed to rise from the carpet and seep out of the upholstery of the seats, a warm, woody smell. She realized she was inhaling the lingering traces of Emma Renshaw’s favourite fragrance, trapped inside her car for more than two years. Its emotional significance hit Fry powerfully. It was as if she had just found Emma herself sitting in the driving seat, laughing and flicking back her hair, and spraying Rive Gauche behind her ears.

  Fry straightened and looked round at the Renshaws. She hadn’t been the only one to catch the scent, and for the Renshaws the effect of its release on the trapped air in the car had been devastating. Sarah’s face was suffused and contorted as tears flooded down her cheeks. Howard stared at Fry in despair as his wife buried herself in his Arran sweater.

  Fry pictured Mrs Renshaw, watching out of the window all day long for her daughter to come home. The daughter she was expecting was not only alive and well, but still nineteen, and still wearing the same clothes as the day she went missing, ready to finish the picture she’d been painting or take her Audi for a run.

  When young people went missing, they would always be remembered exactly as they had been on the day they disappeared. Perhaps that was the real secret of eternal youth – an early death.

  ‘Mr Renshaw, have you used this car recently?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ he said.

  ‘Has it been borrowed by anybody?’

  ‘No. We wouldn’t do that. It’s Emma’s car.’

  Fry looked at Sarah, who seemed to be gradually shrinking away from her husband.

  ‘Mrs Renshaw, do you know whether this vehicle has left the garage recently?’

  Sarah Renshaw glanced at her husband, who seemed to become aware of her silence. He turned away from the car to stare at her in astonishment.

  ‘It was only for a few hours,’ she said. ‘And I knew Emma wouldn’t mind. In fact, it seemed quite appropriate at the time.’

  ‘Sarah, what on earth are you talking about?’ said Howard.

  ‘I did think about what Emma would say, if she were here. And I knew she’d say “yes”. So I let him take the car. It was while you were away at that conference in London.’

  ‘Mrs Renshaw –’ said Fry.

  ‘I was sure it wouldn’t do any harm. It was a kind of connection. For a while, I was able to imagine that they’d gone out together and he’d bring Emma back with him when he returned the car.’

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ said Howard, smacking the wing of the car. ‘You did this while my back was turned. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I thought you might be angry. I thought you wouldn’t see it the same way.’

  ‘Mrs Renshaw,’ said Fry, ‘who did you allow to use this car?’

  ‘It was Alex,’ she said. ‘I let Alex Dearden borrow it.’

  Gail Dearden stood in her kitchen at Shepley Head Lodge and stared at her husband. Suddenly, the kitchen didn’t seem to be hers any more. It had been made unfamiliar by an object that lay on the table.

  ‘Where did the shotgun come from?’ she said.

  ‘Somebody left it in the pick-up,’ said Michael.

  ‘What? Just like that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s up to you.’

  Gail thought she recognized where the lie came from. It was the answer given by a defendant in a court case a few years ago – a farmer who had been sent to prison after shooting a burglar in his house. Michael had cut out the newspaper report, and it was still in a drawer somewhere. She’d noticed it only recently.

  ‘I think you bought the gun from someone when you went to Manchester at the weekend,’ said Gail. ‘I knew you were up to something.’

  Dearden shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘And what exactly are you planning to do with it, Michael?’

  He didn’t look at her, but stared out of the window as he spoke. ‘If they come again tonight, I’ll be ready for them.’

  ‘Don’t talk stupid.’

  But Gail could see that his hand was shaking slightly where he clutched the stock of the shotgun. He was wound up to a pitch where he might actually do something stupid.

  ‘I hope to God there are no bullets in it.’

  ‘Cartridges,’ he said. ‘They’re called cartridges.’

  The phone in the hallway began to ring. Michael placed the shotgun casually on the kitchen chair before he went to answer the call. Gail looked at the gun, seeing it properly for the first time, examining it as an actual working implement rather than some anonymous symbol of violence. She had never seen a shotgun before, except in films, wielded by ancient red-faced aristocrats as they blasted away at innocent birds, or a sawn-off version carried over the shoulder of Vinnie Jones. She wondered how it opened to put the bullets in. No, the cartridges. She had a vague picture of something bigger than a bullet, with a thick metal casing and a section that burst open when it was fired. Were these cartridges packed with lead shot, or something like that? Of course they were – that’s why it was called a shotgun.

  She had bought a couple of wild duck once from a butcher in Glossop, and she had wondered what the small black pieces of grit were that had almost chipped her teeth as she chewed the meat. She had mentioned it to the butcher next time she had gone into the shop, and he had laughed at her and told her it was the shot. She had been embarrassed to feel that she had shown her ignorance, and she hadn’t asked any more. But she had realized that was the way they shot wildfowl: with shotguns. Those small black pellets caught the bird in a lethal hail, piercing its flesh and lodging themselves in its muscles and internal organs, maybe in its brain. She shuddered. She supposed it was a quick death, for a bird or a small animal. But what would th
e effect be on a human being?

  Gail looked at the shotgun again. It seemed quite old, and almost had the look of an antique. Even she could see that it was a well-made piece of equipment, the stock made of good wood with an attractive grain, well polished. In fact, the wood looked so attractive and smooth that she wanted to touch it. Her fingers were halfway towards a caress before she drew her hand back, feeling almost as if she had dipped it in something slimy. Beyond the stock, the barrel and the mechanism were dark and covered in a sheen of oil. Now she realized she could smell the gun, that in fact she had been smelling it for several minutes. Its odour was a mixture of oil and metal and varnished wood, dark and sharp and tangy. The smell was part of what had given a new, unsafe feeling to the kitchen. It clashed with the scent of the herbs on the pine dresser and the warm aroma from the Aga. Yet somehow it was at home with those smells, too.

  She looked a little more closely at the gun, her nostrils flexing at the smell. She had a feeling that a shotgun opened halfway along, that it sort of broke in half, with a hinge just behind the barrels. But she couldn’t see a lever or a switch that she might be able to press to open the hinge. In fact, she flinched at the thought of even trying to open it. No, she wouldn’t dare to touch the shotgun, in case it was loaded, after all. She was sure to touch the wrong thing, and it would go off in her hands. She would fire it into the wall, or through the window. Probably the lead shot would shred the pair of thrushes pecking about on the bird table. She almost laughed. It would be one way of establishing whether the gun was loaded or not.

  Most of all, she wished that Michael would come back and take the shotgun away, out of her sight, and out of her kitchen. But at the same time she hoped that he would never touch it again. She wondered fleetingly whether she could hide it before he came back, in the hope that he might then forget it had ever existed.

  And who would leave the gun in the pick-up truck? A neighbour? What neighbours did they have? No one that would give them the time of day. Someone who knew the problems they were having? Or was Michael really lying to her about where he had got it? She didn’t think so. She could usually recognize when he was telling the truth. He didn’t have the wit to make up a story like that. His imagination would fail at the effort. And she didn’t think he would know how to go about buying a shotgun for himself, either. As far as she was aware, he was almost as ignorant as she was herself about guns.