The Rotting Spot

by Valerie Laws

  ‘At last you’re being logical!’

  ‘Now who’s being patronising!’

  ‘Ok, ok, suppose she couldn’t face them at the last minute … or was just about to go in, when along comes old family friend, avuncular employer, Mickey Spence. Been skull-hunting perhaps. Lucy’s upset, she confides in him…’

  ‘Oh, very logical, Will! Lucy says, ‘oh Mickey, I’m so upset, I’ve just found out my aunt is my real mother,’ which he takes to mean ‘I’ve just found out you murdered my cousin Molly’, upon which he kills Lucy to silence her! Has the pathologist checked his ears for excess wax?’

  Will didn’t respond to her scathing sarcasm. ‘Yes!’ he shouted, knocking over his glass. People stared, so he dropped his voice with an effort. ‘I think you might be right, Erica! How about this scenario, it happens just as you say, Lucy’s sitting in her car, nerving herself to go in and face the family, bound to be a painful scene … Spence comes along, ‘Hello Lucy, back again, why, what’s the matter?’ ‘Oh Mickey,’ she goes, ‘I’ve found out what happened, when Molly disappeared, it’s terrible!’ – meaning, at the time when Molly disappeared. But he thinks she’s somehow found out about him killing Molly, and he whips out his little skull-hunting knife, and…’

  ‘Oh please! That is so ludicrous! What would he do with her body, in broad daylight?’

  ‘Perhaps I should tell you, we found blood in Lucy’s car, in the driver’s footwell. Her blood.’

  ‘You never said! I didn’t get the impression you were treating this as a murder hunt! And Liz Seaton said nothing either.’

  ‘Yes well, it was only a couple of drops, could have been there a while…’

  ‘Oh I see!’

  ‘But enough to be consistent with someone using a sharp knife to prick her, make her go with them and keep quiet! He could have marched her off down the back lane, into a back yard, I don’t know, killed her, strangled her maybe, put her body, oh, into a wheelie bin down there, got rid of it in the sea later on when it was dark…’

  ‘Is this what you call logic? Blake distrusted reason. He said the tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction…’

  ‘Don’t forget Spence’s website, The Skull Hunter. Lots of stuff on the blog about the ‘ultimate prize’, the human skull…’ Pity I can’t arrest Blake for wasting police time.

  ‘I already knew he wanted one, I’ve told you that before! Look, maybe the person who killed Molly and hid her head in the rotting spot told him they would get him a human skull, that’s how they got him out there at night, swore him to secrecy, but he couldn’t resist dropping hints. To me and in the blog.’

  ‘So you still think Spence was innocent?’

  ‘Absolutely. Just because he was scruffy and eccentric … and all this abuse stuff is rubbish. If you’re looking for sexual misbehaviour, well, now you know the Seatons aren’t so respectable! Seymour, anyway! Liz, though,’ she said, ‘taking in her husband’s baby to avoid a public scandal … what a single-minded woman! She must really love Seymour … and her sister too. A lot of women would have cut her off, instead, she’s kept her around, practically lived with her. Which suggests she doesn’t blame Peg.’

  Erica sat looking into her empty glass. She looked drawn and tired.

  Will softened. ‘There are a few things that support your view – I was discussing them with Sergeant Massum in bed just the other night –‘

  It was his turn to blush. ‘I mean the pub called bed,’ he explained lamely.

  ‘Course you do.’ At least Will was giving a second look to the Molly case.

  ‘Though, I must insist, Spence is still the most likely suspect.’

  ‘Don’t forget, Molly was living somewhere after she left home and Mickey’s place, until she showed up at the Christmas party. Maybe she’d shacked up with some bloke, even a pimp up in the city, god knows how else she was supporting herself. Young girl, in the throes of rebellion, alienated from her family, she could have got mixed up with any lowlife. They might have killed her.’

  ‘Someone who knew about Spence’s rotting spot,’ Will pointed out. ‘That still points to a local.’

  ‘Or someone who stayed a night or so at Mickey’s hostel,’ countered Erica. ‘That’s where they might have met Molly first. It could have been anyone from anywhere in the country, in theory.’

  ‘Great! It’s going to be almost impossible to find out, with no evidence of when, where or how Molly died. We can rule out head injuries, that’s about it.’

  Erica bowed her head, remembering the smooth undamaged cranium of Molly’s skull. She rallied. Something would have to be done, to get Lucy back. She only hoped she’d done the right thing, telling Will.

  ‘So are you going to tackle the Seatons and Peg about what Lucy found out?’

  ‘I don’t know. On the one hand, I’m reluctant to stir up old troubles if it doesn’t help. If they knew how to find Lucy they would have done it already. So just upsetting them by unearthing family skeletons won’t bring Lucy back.’ Will flinched. ‘Sorry! Bad choice of phrase … on the other hand, since we don’t have a definite resolution of the Molly case, even if it’s only to eliminate any connection … I’ll have to talk to them about it.’

  ‘Steve said something else.’ Erica told Will about Steve’s belief that Lucy would seek more proof, and why.

  ‘You think that’s what Lucy might be doing now?’

  ‘It’s possible. I’ve thought of another scenario, too, even if the Tommy story is true,’ admitted Erica. ‘Lily started sleeping with Frank as soon as she suspected she was pregnant by Tommy. Maybe it was a false alarm, or she had a very early miscarriage, then got pregnant by Frank. Maybe Peg and Liz are both Frank’s daughters. Maybe Lily was a carrier of the colour blind gene, and Tommy’s colour blindness is just a coincidence. It’s not that uncommon, after all. So it’s probably worth checking out DNA testing places, supposing Lucy got hold of some.’

  ‘Have to talk to the Super. I might be able to swing it by saying it would help clarify the Molly case, but he’s clinging on to Mickey Spence as the killer anyway.’

  ‘I’m sure Steve will come up with something,’ Erica said, getting up.

  Yeah, I bet he will, the smart arse, thought Will. ‘Going, Erica? I was going to buy you another drink…’

  ‘Sorry, stuff to do…’

  Steve, he thought. Suddenly, Will put his hand on Erica’s arm. She froze, surprised.

  ‘I er, don’t know how to put this.’ His eyes looked seriously into hers.

  ‘You said yourself how traumatic it might be for Lucy to make such a discovery about her own origins and her family. How it might threaten her very identity.’

  ‘Oh, er, yes,’ Erica felt strangely wrong-footed. ‘More than enough to make her run off to be alone and think.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll come back?’

  ‘Yes. I do.’ Erica met his gaze. ‘Maybe not to Stonehead, but she’ll come back for Toby at least. I have to think that, really. I admit, that bit’s faith rather than logic.’

  ‘It’s just.’ Will hesitated. ‘What if she never comes back? Ever. Could she be that traumatised?’

  ‘What, make a new life somewhere else? Without Toby?’

  ‘I was thinking more of suicide.’

  It was a hot night, and Erica was thirsty and restless, churning the sheets as the very last photon of daylight died over in the west and the short summer darkness began. She remembered how she’d dreamed about Lucy and Molly rolling in the waves like mermaids. If only she could reach Lucy in dreams. It was the kind of thing they’d believed in as teenagers. Telepathy between soul mates. If only she could get to sleep in the first place.

  She woke, slick with sweat, to a milky dawn. It was five- thirty. As she reached up for consciousness, she was letting go of a dream. But it wasn’t about Lucy. She’d dreamed about Liz and Peggy.

  Liz, tall and beautiful, younger, was standing with arms outstretched sideways, her arms raised and fin
gers spread. She stood against a graceful tree, mimicking its shape with her stance. Above her right hand was an apple, bending the branch it grew on. She moved her hand and plucked it, a shining apple, unnaturally red. Erica knew, in the way you do know things in dreams, that it was a poisonous apple. Liz looked almost like the wicked queen in Disney’s Snow White, holding the apple.

  Suddenly, Peg was there, a dark shape. Her face was invisible. She reached to take the apple that Liz held out like a precious gift. But when Peg’s hands closed round the fruit, it ignited as if her touch was flame, into a ball of fire, which then lit up the whole tree. Peg and Liz vanished into the flames, and the tree blazed up briefly, its light blinding, and as quickly burnt out, to stand black and smoking, a charcoaled trunk.

  23

  Monday 7th July

  Wydsand Bay

  Erica headed down to the beach, where the deepening blue of sea and sky painted along creamy sand, the lighthouse like a fresh bottle of milk at the end of the bay, were almost painfully beautiful.

  She had no trouble now getting her quota of exercise. Only by running, swimming, cycling and working was she able to control the adrenalin surging through her blood stream with no place to go. Far from battling the temptations of food, she found herself having to remember to eat. Her hip bones were like blades, which hurt to lie on in bed.

  How she longed to speak to Lucy. The twenty-four- year-old Lucy she’d never met now felt more like a real person to her, hurt, scared, traumatised, needing comfort, counselling, hell, just plain friendship. Will Bennett was tackling the Seatons. She cynically assumed he’d delegate the job to WDC Sally Banner. Probably send two women, she thought, one to tell, one to make a cup of tea. Sometime today, the Seatons would be face-to-face with a possible reason for Lucy going missing. How could they explain it?

  Erica ran on. This time, when she spotted a bundle of feathers like a broken umbrella, she ran on without stopping to evaluate the condition of its skull. It made her think of Mickey, now in a similar state. It made her think of the puffin’s skull that had started her involvement in this whole affair; what had happened to it? When she’d found the devastated rotting spot, she hadn’t noticed whether it was still there or covered in soil or vanished over the cliff. She shook off the painful thoughts like the sand that scattered from her trainers. It was more useful, to Mickey’s memory as much as Lucy and Molly, to go on thinking about the two sisters, and her surreal dream of the night before.

  She and Lucy used to pretend they were sisters sometimes, but real sisters had a very different relationship to friendship. Deeper love, and correspondingly deeper hate, resentment, rivalry. Friends like Erica and Lucy, or Julie and Molly, could lose touch or fall out, while sisters who might have less in common stayed near each other as Liz and Peg had.

  Erica’s own anger at Rina’s response to police allegations about Mickey had been unfair. Rina was only being protective. At times Erica found Rina too maternal, but there were other times when she valued just that trait in her salt of the earth colleague. She’d been angry with her friend, but they’d talk about it and get over it.

  The phrase chimed in Erica’s head. She remembered a conversation she’d had with Will Bennett when she’d quoted just that. William Blake, poet and visionary.

  ‘I was angry with my friend, I told my wrath, my wrath did end.’ Simple words, such insight. ‘I was angry with my foe, I told it not, my wrath did grow.’ From the poem called ‘The Poison Tree’. How did it go on?

  ‘And it grew both day and night, Till it bore an apple bright’ – her dream about the sisters! Liz was the poison tree, with its deadly fruit. She’d given the apple to her sister, and the resulting blaze had consumed them both.

  How much unexpressed rage must Liz have hidden away, growing, towards her apparently dependent sister Peg? Seymour had got Peg pregnant, if Violet’s story was true. And how much would Peg resent the Seatons, so much better off, so much more glamorous, rubbing her nose in her inferiority day after day, year after year? Reminding her of her sin, or humiliation.

  To a homeopath, the poison tree had another meaning and another fruit, the poison nut, which contained strychnine, a remedy for symptoms like those of strychnine poisoning. The remedy called Nux Vomica.

  Suddenly it made sense. Erica often dreamt of patients’ constitutional remedies. Somehow, because she’d known Lucy’s family years back before she’d become a homeopath, Erica hadn’t thought of them in homeopathic terms. Now it was clear. Liz was a Nux Vomica type. And Peg, who’d ignited them both with the poison tree, leaving black smouldering charcoal, her constitutional remedy was Carbo Veg, vegetable charcoal! They did have the proper characteristics. Was that all the dream meant?

  And yet, it could be that looking closely at their remedy pictures might be a useful way to learn more about the sisters. She would look in the Materia Medica for the descriptions of those who responded best to Nux Vom and Carbo Veg. The dream had shown her a destructive relationship. Perhaps that was real. She strained to remember the end of Blake’s poem: ‘In the morning glad I see My foe stretched out beneath the tree.’ But who was, or would be, the foe?

  At Ivy Lodge, Erica answered the phone. The voice she heard dropped down through her like a stone in a well. Her heart began to pound. A dry, charming, authoritative voice, which she’d last heard over the phone five years before. Liz Seaton. Erica’s body reacted to the memory of how Liz had warned her away from Lucy while she tried to listen rationally to Liz’s words. She wiped her suddenly slick hands on her thighs.

  ‘Hello?’ Liz was puzzled at her silence.

  ‘Yes, I’m here.’ She managed to sound normal. She hoped. She felt guilty, as if she’d done something wrong. Liz Seaton was saying something about Inspector Bennett, phone call, great shock …

  Erica pulled herself together. She jammed the phone under her chin, reaching for some rescue remedy, which she managed to drop onto her tongue. ‘Oh yes?’ she said stupidly into another expectant pause.

  ‘Erica, this has come as a great shock to us. We had no idea Lucy had picked up this story…’ Liz broke off and Erica could almost hear her dry-mouthed swallowing. ‘I rather wish you hadn’t heard it, but I suppose it’s too late now. Why won’t people leave us alone?’

  ‘Because we want to find Lucy, just like you.’ Erica forced herself to speak calmly.

  She heard Liz’s deep breath as she established control over herself, in order to make her point. A cool one, even under pressure.

  ‘I’ve asked Inspector Bennett to bring you and Steve to our cottage. I’d like to explain what you’ve heard. I hope you’ve not repeated it to anyone else – this could do our family a great deal of harm in the village.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘We’re having to stay here just now. Peg is terribly upset by recent events; Hex Tower’s no longer inhabitable. Boat- loads of tourists are going round the harbour and so on, quite disgusting, and the village people are gossiping about my family.’

  As disgusting as getting your bereaved sister-in-law pregnant? Or do different rules apply to the Seatons? Erica felt all her hostility brimming once again, ironically, since she felt the same way about the rubbernecking ghouls herself.

  She agreed to Liz’s proposition, noticing with some surprise that she’d stopped shaking. Ok it was an awkward conversation, but Liz was just a poor worried mother with her world falling apart. And despite shrinking from the coming scene, Erica was desperate to know more.

  She called Will, explaining she’d be free mid-afternoon. He arranged to pick her up.

  ‘Seems Liz Seaton wants to explain what you’ve heard. We had to agree to a few ground rules though.’

  ‘Surely she’s in no position to impose rules?’ Erica bristled.

  ‘Well nothing you told me is illegal, and we have no right to ask about it except if it looks relevant to the Molly case.’

  There it was again, that damn phrase. ‘The Molly case.’

  ‘And
there’s no evidence that it is. Anyway, the chief rule is understandable. Liz Seaton does not want her sister Peg involved in the discussion. She is too upset about the discovery of her daughter’s, er, remains and Lucy’s continuing absence. As who wouldn’t be? And if you think about it Erica, if Violet’s story is true, Peg was illegitimate, which might be a shock too far in her present condition. As well as something she doesn’t need to know anyway. Liz Seaton says she’s on the verge of a complete breakdown.’

  Erica felt like a heartless monster. ‘At least I don’t talk about Peg’s daughter like she was luggage,’ she retorted.

  ‘Luggage?’ Will sounded baffled.

  ‘The Molly case. That’s what you call her. See you later.’ She hung up without giving him a chance to reply and followed Rina to the deli where they sat outside on tiny iron chairs round a patio table eating organic sandwiches. Erica described her dream and the reference to Blake’s poison tree.

  ‘Sounds like Disney does Blake. Well weird. Nux Vom, eh? Don’t they tend to a bit of control freakery?’

  ‘Hmm. Nux Vom people are hard workers, ambitious, keen to achieve status and the good life, very self reliant. They drive themselves hard, never doubt themselves, set very high standards and often reach them. Often concerned for others, especially others’ health and well being. But they like admiration and respect. Their status means a lot to them. Very tidy and precise. All good stuff. And very like Liz.’

  ‘If you say so. Wouldn’t fancy marrying one. Fits in with Liz working her way from nothing to consultant though. Not to mention living in a castle, sort of.’

  ‘That’s the thing. The down side is when others can’t reach their high standards, clear thinking, exactitude, order. Nux Vom’s can be irritable; and can use aggression to control others, be domineering and impatient.’

  ‘Oh dear. There’s her protectiveness towards Peg. But Peg can’t reach her standards at all. I can see she’d make a saint impatient and irritable. What about Seymour though? He must fall a long way short of Liz’s standards.’