The Spill: The Beach Never Looked So Deadly (A Ray Hammer Novel Book 1)

by Aaron Leyshon

  He noticed the look. “Hathaway’s nice,” he said. “Your eyes aren’t bulging as much as I thought they would be.” He laughed.

  Ed looked perfectly fine. Rested, even. Obviously, nobody had lain a finger on him. “Told me they roughed you up a bit.” I couldn’t help but sound disappointed.

  “No, I think he liked me. We were bonding over what we didn’t like about you.”

  That was a slap in the face. “What, you think I’m an unlikable kind of guy?”

  “I think you don’t make friends easily, Ray.”

  “Would you count yourself one of my friends?”

  He looked at me, sheepish. “You know, it’s not like that, Ray. We’re not . . . we have to work together,” he said. “We can’t be friends.”

  “Who said colleagues couldn’t be friends?”

  “It’s just you’re a hard nut to crack, Ray.”

  “Because I don’t indulge people’s bullshit?”

  “Because you don’t let people in. You keep them at arm’s length.”

  He was wrong about that. I did let people in. I just didn’t like how they made me feel once they were inside.

  “You can get out anytime you like,” I said, slowed the car down, leaned over and pushed his door open.

  He scrabbled with his seat belt, trying to put it on.

  “I said you can get out.”

  “You haven’t stopped. Don’t be crazy!” he said.

  I sped up and pulled the door closed. A look of relief washed over his face.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “Friends.”

  I didn’t reply to that. I didn’t have to. I switched on the radio. An ABBA song. Ed started humming happily. Out of spite, I changed the channel. Bruce Springsteen, “Born to Run”. He began humming to that one. I turned the radio back off. He continued to hum the tune. I took out my flask and knocked it back.

  “You really shouldn’t do that,” he said. “It’s bad for you. It’ll be your early grave.”

  It was a bad choice of words, but it had its effect. “Won’t be as early as Andy Duffy’s grave,” I shot back.

  It was five minutes past ten now, and the white wrought-iron railings around the cemetery swung into view. “Where the fuck’s this church?” I said.

  My editor didn’t have a clue. Wasn’t even bothered about me saying “fuck” and “church” in the same sentence. He just went on humming. Small things amuse small minds, I guess.

  As we approached, a tired and worn-looking Celia Duffy was throwing a clump of dirt down onto Andy’s coffin. She stepped back, dusted her hands, and wiped a tear from her eye. I walked up to her.

  “Nice service,” I said with as much sincerity as I could manufacture.

  Her mouth greeted me, but her eyes told me it was all my fault. She didn’t even bother to look at Ed. “We couldn’t afford to repatriate him,” she said, the tears welling behind her eyes again.

  “He was a good man,” I said.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she retorted, and fell forward into my chest, sobbing. Instinctively, I put my arms around her, held her close for a moment, rubbing her shoulders. I agreed with her. I shouldn’t be here. Duffy shouldn’t have been here either, stiff in the ground, and I blamed myself for that. If I hadn’t asked him to dig around Michael Connelly, he might still be alive. Instead, I told her that he’d died doing what he loved. It sounded stupid the second it left my lips.

  Her whole body racked and her fist thumped into my chest. I held her tighter and she pushed me away. “He died being strangled and thrown through a skylight. You think that’s what he loved?”

  I shouldn’t have said what I said next, but I had a bad habit of putting my foot in my mouth. “I don’t know what he liked in the bedroom.”

  She let out a scream, high-pitched, furious. Her fingernails slashed across my already char-broiled face. My foot was starting to feel a lot better by comparison. Celia turned on her sensible heels and stomped back to the graveside, looked down on her dead husband, my friend, my colleague, Andy Duffy. Just a couple of planks of ply and some nails now . . . worm food. She let the sobs throw her whole body into convulsions as the yellow digger rumbled forward to push unceremonious clumps of dirt over the coffin.

  The whole thing had been a small affair. There were about 15 people, none of whom I recognized. Andy’s family, I presumed. I wondered whether Andy had been having an affair, because at the back of the small huddle of mourners, one woman—a lithe cutting figure, garbed in the kind of mourning outfit that would befit a Victorian heroine, her face veiled, a black cap on her head—had slipped away from the gravesite. He’d never told me about any other women, even though I’d pressed him over drinks. He was faithful as far as I knew, but the way that woman moved out, it was like she’d lost someone, someone she cared about.

  Also, for the record, her effortless grace and poise created attention in my pants that needed to be relieved.

  My editor bobbled at my shoulder. “He was a good man, wasn’t he? He was.” Ed mumbled, as if trying to convince himself. As if making all the right noises exonerated him from all responsibility.

  I glared at him. Where the fuck did he get off, talking to me about Duffy? “You didn’t have much to do with him.”

  “I . . . I got him his job, didn’t I?”

  “Maybe that makes you responsible for him being killed,” I said.

  Ed looked flustered. “No. I mean, accidents happen. It’s not . . .”

  I refused to give him any slack. I waved my arm around, encompassing the scene, a grave that would likely remain unmarked, crammed into the corner of a poorly maintained cemetery, in an unknown land. “You could have at least made sure the paper could get his body home.”

  He bobbed up and down on his heels. Ed didn’t like talking about money. Ed didn’t like doing anything when it came to money. So he chose to pretend I hadn’t said anything at all. “But he was a good man. He was. I liked him.”

  “You don’t like me,” I said. But that was a given, and right now, I wasn’t in the mood to give a shit. And then, I saw him in the distance, a familiar face, kneeling, leaning over a grave. Adrian Jones.

  “Hathaway was very interested to talk to you,” said Ed, trying to draw me back, as if he realized he was losing my attention.

  I threw him a distracted look. “I’m sure he was. Has he got anything more on me?”

  “Another body, he thinks. Just waiting for forensics to come back.”

  “He told you all that?”

  “Of course he did. As I said, we got on very well. We have our coffee the same way. Black and bitter, you know?” There was a trace of pride, as if the ability to swill down near-boiling hits of caffeine was a badge of manhood.

  “You and a billion other people,” I said.

  I wasn’t listening anymore. My eyes were fixed on Adrian Jones in the distance. What was he doing? He was crouch down next to a headstone. Whose grave was it? And where had he been? Why wasn’t he appearing on all of the talk shows tearing up and asking where his daughter was or why she’d gone missing or how to find her? Why wasn’t he crying when her body parts turned up in other people’s houses? My editor was babbling away.

  “We’re just not regular cappuccino kind of guys, you know . . .”

  I didn’t have a fuck to give about the newly formed Coffee Lovers Club. Adrian Jones stood up, crossed himself and walked swiftly away from the grave.

  “Excuse me,” I said, sidestepping Ed.

  At least it cut into his babbling. He gave me a myopic, distracted look. “So, are you coming back home?” he asked.

  I waved the question away. I was already halfway to the headstone. I looked back and saw Ed was hopping over to Celia Duffy, no doubt to tell her how great a man her husband was, how much of a great, great man he was despite the fact that Ed hardly knew him. The look on her face must’ve been the same one I wore when he’d rabbited it in my ears. A look of complete indifference.

  Adrian was moving faster
now. As I stumbled to catch up to him, the harsh light beat down on me and I felt my lips parched. I swiped my flask out and wet my tongue, kept going, reached the headstone, looked down at it quickly. I glanced at the name: Margaret Jones. Another Jones; his mother, maybe. No, the dates didn’t match. A sister? A daughter? I couldn’t be sure. I could always come back and check the headstone though. But, if Adrian Jones got away, I wouldn’t get another chance to talk to him.

  I powered on through the cemetery. He was about a hundred yards ahead, shuffling uncomfortably, like he knew he was being watched. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt. I tried to close the gap, 90, 80 yards. He kept moving through the cemetery. He was almost back to the parking lot now. Sometimes he flitted behind headstones and I worried that he wouldn’t come back out the other side, but he always did. I turned my head this way and that, trying to get a better fix on him.

  About 50 yards now. He should be able to hear me moving. My breaths came heavy in my chest. I wasn’t in great shape at that point, not my best shape anyway. The drinking certainly wasn’t helping.

  I sucked in a few more lung-fulls of air and paused just enough to take another sip of whiskey. I was closing the gap. About 20 yards now separated us. Adrian glanced back over his shoulder, saw me, quickened his pace. Twenty-five yards. I quickened mine, brought it down to 15. He moved faster, ducked behind some more headstones. I was closer now, ten maybe, but I couldn’t see him.

  And then, he burst out again on the other side. He made a dash for the cars. I stepped on some graves and made to cut him off. I hoped the ghosts within would forgive me. I was just about in between him and the cars. We were closing now; five yards. He looked at my eyes and darted off in the other direction towards a thicket of trees. I wasn’t quite so agile. I couldn’t change direction anywhere near as quickly as he could. I performed a lumbering pirouette and my foot caught in the rusty rail that ran around an old grave. I spilled forward, my body coming down hard on concrete, leaving a scrape up my left arm that was a lovely complement to my other burns, wounds and bruises. I stumbled to my feet, not quite sure which direction he’d gone in. And then, I saw the thicket again. I made for it. I couldn’t see him now. He must be inside.

  I closed the gap to the thicket and stopped, tried to get my breathing under control, had another drink to steady my nerves, steady my shaking hand. I listened, tried to stop my breathing, listened again. There was movement inside. I stepped into the darkness and followed the sound of footsteps. The church bells rang in the distance and the footsteps scurried into the undergrowth.

  I was close. I could hear his breathing now, raspy, thick like mine, although from what I’d seen of him he was in much, much better shape than I was. And then, the footsteps stopped. Mine ran on for another couple of steps before I, too, froze.

  I listened carefully. His breathing, I couldn’t hear it. I took a few tentative steps forward, and then another few. Here in the dark of the thicket there were bigger trees, large trunks stretched out. He could have been behind any of them, in any of them. I took another hesitant step forward, expecting a branch to come out and smash me in the face, but it never came. Neither did the fist.

  There was a thump behind me. I turned to see Adrian’s feet flicking up the undergrowth. I sprinted back after him. He was fast, but I willed myself to be faster. I was almost on him now. The thicket was closing and then opening up. I could see the sunlight from the parking lot as it filtered through the leaves at the front. I stretched out a hand, grabbed at his T-shirt, felt it tear as it pulled his torso back and his feet kept running under him. He crashed down into the leaves.

  I swung one leg over him and pinned him to the ground. He struggled briefly, and then relaxed back into the undergrowth. He sucked in a few heaving breaths and I did the same. I briefly put my flask to my lips.

  “Wait,” he said. “Who the fuck are you?”

  Chapter 20

  Poisonous

  Adrian sliced off a sliver of steak, put it in his mouth, chewed thoughtfully, and washed it down with a large gulp of beer. The bar was nestled in the foothills of the Rock and offered a beautiful view out over the ocean. The sun was going down. We’d been talking for a while now. Well, Adrian had. He’d just about run me through his whole life story: how shortly after he’d married Gemma, his sister had died, writhing in agony. He maintained that she’d been poisoned, but never knew who by. He always thought maybe Gemma had something to do with it. It terrified him. He wasn’t game to step out of line at home.

  “I always thought if I stepped out of line or did anything wrong, she’d kill me like she had my sister. I never said anything about these things to anyone. I never expressed my fears or doubts or considerations because I . . . I didn’t want to die, and I felt like anything that I did say would come across as pretty accusatory and she didn’t like when I accused her of doing things. She could get violent, you know.”

  I asked him if the grave was his sister’s. He told me it was, that he visited her once every week.

  “I thought Gemma hired you to kill me,” he laughed, “like you were one of Michael’s goons or something.”

  I asked him about that, dug into it a little bit deeper. “She spends a bit of time with Michael, does she?”

  He nodded. “They went to school together. Good friends. Nothing more. But I don’t believe anything she tells me, not after my sister.”

  “So why’d you stay with her? Why didn’t you leave, get a divorce, something like that?”

  “I couldn’t. We had Sarah and, well, I had to stay for her.”

  I could feel myself starting to get a bit dizzy. The story had gone on for hours and I hadn’t got anywhere really. Adrian didn’t seem to know shit. He had a feeling about his wife, but nothing to back it up. No evidence, no proof, no reason to even come to that conclusion. In fact, the more he talked the crazier he sounded, the more unlikely his story seemed. He sliced another bit of steak and put it in his mouth. I sloshed back my whiskey.

  “You gonna eat anything?” he asked.

  “I’m on a diet.” It was true, kind of. I was on the not-enough-money-to-pay-for-a-fancy-meal diet.

  “Looks healthy,” he said sardonically.

  He was right. A liquid diet wasn’t going to help me, certainly not in cases where I’d be chasing people like him.

  “Anyway, when I heard the gunshots that morning at the zoo, I peered out of the toilets. Saw them coming. Saw them snatch Sarah. I pissed myself.”

  I took another swig, hoping it would wash that image from my mind. “Literally?” Ugh.

  “No, no, of course not. I ran. I didn’t want to die in that fucking zoo. Can you imagine a worse place to die? A spectacle for everyone to watch. They’d probably feed me to the lions or something like that.”

  The small wildlife park probably didn’t even have lions, but I took his point. “Not just two bullets to the head?”

  “If my wife had anything to do with it, it wouldn’t be that quick.”

  “She really doesn’t like you or your family,” I stated the obvious.

  He cut the fatty rind off his steak. I reached over and grabbed it, flung it into my mouth, chewed and chewed and chewed. Couldn’t break it down. Tried to swallow. It got stuck in my throat a little bit. I coughed, sputtered, spat it back out onto the table, into a napkin, put it back on his plate.

  He stared down at the plate in disgust. Good.

  “So, you did what any man would do in that situation,” I sneered. I didn’t bother to disguise my contempt. “You ran away with two hands in the air, squealing. You left your daughter to be taken by a bunch of strangers and dismembered bit by bit, day by day.”

  Adrian’s face clouded over. Tears welled in his eyes. “Well, when you put it like that,” he muttered, pushing his plate over towards me. I wasn’t sure if he didn’t want it because it reminded him of his daughter’s dismemberment or if it was because I’d put my fat on it, but either way, I’d scored a free meal. I took the plate and dug i
nto the steak, picked it up with my hands and took a bite, put it back down, chewed. Medium rare, perfectly done.

  “You don’t know my wife,” he said defensively. “If she gets hold of me . . . Look, she’s trying to set me up. This is all just a ploy to get custody. She wanted the divorce. I didn’t. I would’ve stuck it out for Sarah.”

  “What’s she gonna get custody of?” I said. “A head and a perfect lock of hair? Because there won’t be much left of her at this rate.”

  Adrian let his head fall into his hands and let out a wail. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I heard the reports. I . . . I couldn’t believe she’d do something like that. Not to our daughter. Just to get back at me? For what?”

  That was an interesting turn of phrase. I pounced. “Does she have something to get back at you for?”

  His eyes took on a shifty glaze. “No, I haven’t done anything—nothing that she would disapprove of, anyway.”

  I didn’t believe him. Everything else so far; honest, not defensive. This? His hackles were up. He didn’t want to say, he didn’t want to talk about it, but the choice of words suggested that there was something more there. I tried a different tack.

  “You think she’d do this to her own daughter?”

  “You don’t know her, man. She’s crazy.” One hand made the loopy sign around his ear, and then he slammed both fists onto the tabletop. It made the plate my dinner was sitting on rattle.

  “Fuck! Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it!” he said, and he let his head fall forward onto the table’s edge as well. Melodrama came naturally to him, it seemed.

  “Don’t do that,” I said, and took another bite of the steak and washed it down with some whiskey, from the bottle I shouldn’t have with me in this fine establishment.

  When he finally lifted his head, his voice was barely a squeak. “I . . . I thought I could help. If I was alive, I could do something, find my daughter, help her somehow. I just had to stay out of my wife’s sights. She was gonna kill me. I was sure of it. I’m fuckin’ useless. I’m a terrible father and I can’t do anything to help my daughter.”