Palmer-Jones 05 - Sea Fever

by Ann Cleeves

  All day Molly watched them, too. They might have thought she was asleep in the deck chair under the front porch, a book turned facedown on her knee. It would have been understandable. She was elderly and had been up for half the night. In fact, she had more stamina than any of them, and through half-closed eyes she watched them. From her raised position she could see Rose on her bench with the view of the valley, and she could tell that Rose was watching, too, and waiting for something. Each time a car approached, the younger woman became tense until it appeared through the vegetation, and then there was disappointment. She must have been able to identify Rosco’s van just by the bangs and rattles as it came through the trees, because before she could see it, she had already relaxed. When she had seen it safely down the lane to the cottage on the shore, she felt able to leave her white bench and go inside to do other things.

  Molly watched Duncan James waiting in the garden until it was his turn to be interviewed. She saw him stoop to examine the aquatic plants at the edge of the stream, as if the routine intellectual activity of identifying them would keep his mind from other, less pleasant things. And because the windows were open, she could hear what was going on inside the house, the constant telephone calls of Roger Pym, the surprising encouragement of Gerald Matthews, and the facetious mocking of Rob Earl.

  When Rose took Gerald into the kitchen late in the afternoon to put things straight between them, she took no notice of Molly, dozing outside the open door. Even if the old lady did hear, she thought, what would it matter? It was time the thing was out in the open. It had been ridiculous to make a secret of it. Gerald went with her light-headedly. He had never felt so alive.

  “I want to talk to you,” Rose said. “It’s about Tilly.”

  He was immediately wary, prepared for disappointment.

  “What about her?”

  “Louis is her father.” He said nothing but stared down the valley.

  “You don’t seem surprised,” she said.

  “I’ve seen you around together,” he said. “You always seem very friendly.” He did not tell her that he was so used to disappointment that even in the excitement of the morning he was preparing for it. He did not tell her that pride was all he had left, so he was not going to let her see how hurt he was. What about Greg Franks? he wanted to scream. Where did he come into all this? What was he doing here?

  “There are things you don’t know about Louis,” she said. “ Things you don’t understand. When he first came to Porthkennan, he confided in me. I felt sorry for him.”

  “And isn’t that what you felt for me?” he lashed out. “ Poor old Gerald. No friends. So social graces. Isn’t that what you thought? But you wouldn’t let me go to bed with you.”

  “Gerald,” she said, “I’m sorry.” But as she was talking to him, she was looking outside, towards the shore.

  “You should grow up,” he shouted angrily. “We’re not all lame dogs to be petted.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, but the repeated apology only irritated him, and then he did ask the question that had been singing in his brain as a way of getting back at her.

  “Where did Greg Franks come into all this?” he demanded. “What did you mean last night when you said he was upsetting things?”

  She went suddenly white, as if he had slapped her face.

  “Nothing!” she said, in a whisper, looking for the first time at Molly beyond the open door. “ I didn’t mean anything.”

  Roger Pym waited until the inspector returned to Heanor before he sought Molly out. Until he sat beside her, she had not realized how much pressure he was under. She had thought he was wrapped up in the new bird, but perhaps, after all, that was only a distraction. She had met him with George and had always dismissed him as insensitive, mindlessly competitive. She knew he taught physical education at a large comprehensive school on a council estate outside Bristol and thought him obsessed with his own fitness and his own list. He would be the worst kind of gym teacher, she thought, concerned only to prove that he could run faster, and longer distances than the boys in his charge. Now she saw he was getting older and thought that as it became less easy to compete, he would grow vicious. When he sat beside her, he was sweating. Beads of perspiration clung to the hairs on his arms, and he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “This is terrible,” Roger said. “I don’t know what the school will say about my being mixed up with the police like this. Or the parents.”

  Roger’s previous descriptions of the parents at his school had been a little prejudiced. They were feckless mothers who either drank or were on the game, and unemployed, illiterate fathers. Neither, Molly thought, would be particularly concerned about Roger Pym. She said it must be very worrying.

  “There was that ridiculous argument about the list,” Roger said. “Someone must have mentioned it to the police. I hope too much isn’t made of it.”

  “Did you ever find out what Greg’s list was?” Molly asked. It was a mischievous question. She did not expect a response.

  “No,” he cried, his hands shaking. “ No. Of course not.”

  Jane Pym walked up, as cool and composed as if she were appearing in court. The police had given them permission to leave Porthkennan for an hour, she said. She quite fancied a drink, so why didn’t they drive into Heanor and go to that place where they had spent so much of their honeymoon? Roger agreed immediately and was almost gallant.

  They walked away, but Molly remained where she was. She hoped that Rose would want to talk to her, too. Her curiosity had been aroused by the overheard conversation. She had tantalising glimpses of the woman in the kitchen, peeling vegetables in preparation for supper. Molly wondered if she should call in and offer to help, but it seemed that Rose preferred to be alone while she mixed a crumble in a large brown bowl.

  Duncan James had walked back to his position in the lower garden by the stream. As dusk approached, his claustrophobia returned, and he paced backwards and forwards trying to fight it off.

  Chapter Eight

  George left Porthkennan early on Sunday morning and arrived in Bristol to quiet streets and the sound of church bells. The new development around the docks was empty. The wealthy young people who lived there would still be sleeping off the parties of the night before. There was an occasional jogger stumbling over the fancy cobbles on the path along the river. George considered parking there, finding somewhere for coffee. And still in the back of his mind was the wonder of the red-footed petrel, which seemed to grow larger and more vivid in his imagination, so he thought, too, of looking up the curator of vertebrate biology at the museum, who was an old friend of his. But he knew these were delaying tactics. Before he did anything, he would have to see the Franks.

  He drove through the town centre and out to the suburbs beyond. There was a cemetery lined by dusty trees, and the only colour was on a flower stall outside the gates. It was a bank holiday weekend, and respectable citizens would be decorating, cleaning the car, or in caravans on the Welsh coast. The pavements and the roads were still almost empty, although the sun was shining and it was hotter than ever.

  Muriel Franks opened the door to him. She was wearing a candlewick dressing gown and fluffy blue slippers. Her mouth was slightly open, and her face was grey. For a moment she seemed not to recognize him; then she considered him with a flat, expressionless stare.

  “It’s you,” she said, and he could not tell what she thought about his appearing on the doorstep. “I thought it would be the police again. You’d better come in.”

  She stood aside, and he walked ahead of her into the stuffy sitting room. Dennis Franks sat in one of the large soft armchairs. He, too, looked exhausted, but he seemed sustained by a vague and undirected anger. When George came in, he stood up.

  “You’ve got a nerve,” he said, “ coming here after what’s happened.”

  “I thought you might like to talk to me,” George said. “ I was on the boat when Greg died.”

  “They w
on’t bloody tell me what happened,” Franks said with helpless fury. “They say there were suspicious circumstances. I don’t know what that means.”

  He turned towards George in a threatening way, his chin thrust forward, hoping perhaps for an excuse for the relief of violence but not quite able to see it through. When he spoke again, it was with a confused desperation.

  “What have you done?” he demanded. “ You went to Cornwall to send my son home, and now he’s dead.”

  Muriel Franks, who had followed George into the room and was sitting, crumpled, on a corner of the sofa, began to cry.

  “I’m so sorry,” George said, but he knew the words were inadequate, and his sympathy only seemed to refuel Franks’ anger.

  “What did you say to him?” the man cried. “Did you frighten him into jumping from the boat?” Then, because of his lack of control over his wife’s tears illustrated his lack of control in the whole unbelievable situation he added, “Have you seen what this is doing to Muriel?”

  George was becoming angry himself, with the police who seemed to have left the couple without any real information, with all their questions unanswered.

  “Didn’t the police tell you that they believe Greg was murdered?” George said.

  “I’ve told you!” Franks cried. “ They wouldn’t bloody tell me anything. I want to know!”

  Muriel Franks looked up, bewildered and unhappy, startled by the noise of his voice, and her words were so inappropriate and irrational that the two men stared at her for a moment in silence. “He was such a good little swimmer when he was a boy,” she said. “I told the police that.”

  At last Franks sat beside her. “Why don’t you go and lie down?” he said gently. “You must be tired.”

  But she shook her head and remained where she was.

  “I’m afraid the swimming wouldn’t have helped,” George said. He felt Muriel deserved an explanation. “ The police think he must have been unconscious when he reached the water.”

  “How!” Franks demanded.

  “There’s a head wound,” George said, “which can’t be explained by Greg’s falling.”

  “Are you telling me that someone hit our lad on the head and no one stopped him? What the hell were you all doing?”

  “We were all on deck birdwatching,” George said. “Greg had been seasick and was lying down on his own.” He knew how unlikely the explanation sounded. It was impossible to describe the noise and excitement of that time on the Jessie Ellen.

  “I don’t understand it,” Franks went on raging at the mystery, the uncertainty. “ It seems a strange do to me. I want to know what happened.” He turned to George. “ I hold you responsible,” he said. “I was paying you. You owe me an explanation.”

  “You do realise,” George said, “that there’ll be a police investigation. The detective in charge of the enquiry seems very competent.”

  “I want you to find out what happened,” Franks said. It was something to hold on to. “I’ve no control over the police. You’ll be my man. I’ll be paying you.”

  “I’ll be my own man,” George said, stung at last to retaliation, “whoever pays the bill. If I agree to help you, it’ll be to find out what happened to Greg. And I’ll do it my way.”

  Franks moved over to the window and stared out into the empty street. A woman pulling a fat corgi on a lead walked past and peered in through the net curtains with a malevolent curiosity.

  “All right,” he said. His life had been ruled by certainty, the figures of profit and loss, the routine of production. In his own way he had been a powerful man. At least with George’s intervention in the case, he would have the power of involvement and information. Without that he would be lost. “On your own terms, then. But I want to know what happened to him. I want an explanation I can accept.”

  “You’ll have the truth!” George said. “I won’t concoct an explanation just to satisfy you. If I can’t find out how he came to fall, you’ll have to accept it.”

  Franks nodded, but the idea of a continuing mystery seemed to terrify him.

  “What will you do?”

  “You’ll have to leave that to me,” George said. It would hardly inspire confidence if he admitted he had no idea.

  Muriel, who had been curled up like a child in the corner of the sofa, her dressing gown wrapped around her bare feet, watching them in a daze of grief, suddenly stirred.

  “I wish there was something I could do,” she said. “ It’s the waiting for news that’s so hard …”

  George felt she still had not grasped what had happened. He thought some well-meaning doctor had given her a sedative, and her mind wandered between dream and reality. It was as if she believed Greg might walk in through the door any moment.

  “You could talk to me about Greg,” he said. “That would help.”

  “What good would that do!” Franks said. “I’m not paying you to sit on your arse in our front room. The police have been here all morning with their questions.”

  George ignored him. “Did the police ask you about drugs?” he asked her.

  The woman nodded. “I told them Greg was a good boy,” she said. “He’d never do anything like that.”

  “Did Greg ever have visitors here?” George asked.

  “No,” she said. “ When he was living here, I told him to bring his friends home more. I would have liked to meet them. But he never did.”

  “What about phone calls?” George’s voice was soft and coaxing. “Were there any of those?”

  “Oh,” she said, and she almost laughed. “There were always phone calls. You know what it’s like with birdwatching. Wanting to know what was about and where to go. Even when he had left home, they still phoned here.”

  “Did you take messages for him?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “Not often. I don’t think they trusted me. If Greg wasn’t in, they said they’d phone back.”

  “Did you get any names?” George asked. “ Did he have any special friends?”

  She was a lonely woman, he thought. She had no life of her own. It was possible that she had lived vicariously through Greg, cherishing his friends as her own, taking an interest in all their activities.

  “They didn’t talk to me,” she said sadly. “Not really. Just asked for Greg when I answered the phone. Sometimes I asked him about them, and he’d tell me. There was a Mr. Pym who used to phone sometimes. He was a nicely spoken gentleman. Greg said he was a teacher at the high school on the heath. ‘You want to keep in with him,’ I told Greg. ‘That’s the class of friend you need.’”

  “And did Greg keep in with Roger Pym?” George asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “ Not lately. When Greg was a lad, before he could drive, I think Mr. Pym took them out birdwatching at the weekends a couple of times. To the reservoirs. Chew Valley Lake. You know.”

  “Them?” George asked. “ Who else went on these trips, Mrs. Franks?”

  She shrugged. She did not know. Lads from school, she supposed. Greg had always been one for keeping himself to himself.

  George thought Greg must have been keeping his private life secret for years if the only name she could remember was of a man who had taken her son birdwatching when he was still a schoolboy.

  “Did Greg have a girlfriend?” George asked.

  Her eyes filled again with tears. The reality of Greg’s death had overwhelmed her once more. She was realising that there would be no wedding, no daughter-in-law, no grandchildren.

  “He went out sometimes with girls,” she said. “I heard him talking to them sometimes on the phone, arranging to pick them up. I saw him with one in town last year, just after Christmas. It was Saturday afternoon, and I’d been to the winter sales. He didn’t see me. She was a real beauty. Tall and blond, like something you’d see on the front of a magazine. And the clothes she wore! He never brought her home. I expect he was ashamed of us.”

  Dennis Franks had been standing by the window with his back to the room du
ring the conversation. Now he turned around and glared at George.

  “What do you think you’re doing with all these questions?” he said. “ This won’t do any good. You know who was on the boat with you. You should be talking to them, not to us.”

  “I’ll be doing that, too,” George said. He allowed Mrs. Franks to shrink back into the comfort of the sofa and directed the next question to her husband. “ Your son always had a lot of money,” he said. “Didn’t it occur to you to wonder how a young man could have achieved such an income?”

  “I thought he was doing well for himself,” Franks said proudly. “A chip off the old block, I thought. A businessman. I built my company up from nothing, too.”

  “How did you think he made his money?”

  “Buying and selling, he said when I asked him.”

  “You must have realised it was likely that he was involved in something illegal.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Franks said defensively. “So maybe it was all pound notes, I thought. Maybe he’s not telling the taxman everything. We all do a bit of that, don’t we? I broke a few rules when I started out. Still do, probably, but I’ve got a good accountant.”

  George would have said, rather pompously, that he considered tax evasion as much a crime as theft or burglary, but Franks was continuing, “Besides, I’d not seen the boy for months. I don’t know what he’d been up to recently.”

  There was a silence. A lone bus rumbled past the window. George was reminded of his last visit to the house, when he had been tempted by the prospect of Cornish seabirds to sacrifice his judgement and reason. The result had been a new seabird for the world and a murder. He had not needed Dennis Franks to tell him that he had responsibility in the case.