The Cruelty of Morning

by Hilary Bonner

  Bill Turpin’s heart also died that day. He signed his fishing boat over to the navy and volunteered for all the toughest jobs going, anywhere and everywhere his increasingly grateful chiefs wanted to send him. They assigned him to a special operations unit. Bill behaved as if he had a death wish, and it was against the odds that he survived. In the years to come he never spoke of his war days, but he returned in 1945 a different man to the gentle good-humoured Bill of pre-war days.

  He soon surprised his old North Devon friends by buying, outright, a little house just out of Pelham Bay, an isolated stone-built cottage carved into the cliffside and with sweeping views out to sea. Bill explained that business ventures during the war had made him a few bob, and now he wanted to invest it in a new life. But how an impecunious fisherman had come to make the kind of money he now seemed to have was the subject of much speculation in the area.

  Soon after the war there had been a huge robbery at the grand old Exmoor house owned by the then Earl of Lynmouth. Art treasures worth millions had allegedly been stolen, and Lord Lynmouth killed. Few could remember the details, but Bill had been some kind of a suspect for a bit. Nothing came of it, of course, and the police had apparently investigated him only briefly, yet the rumours stuck around for generations and grew with the passage of time – as rumours are wont to do. Whenever there was a major crime anywhere in Britain, people in North Devon were inclined to mention the name of Bill Turpin. If you kept your ear to the ground in the pubs of Pelham Bay or Durraton you would hear whispers about old Bill being the brains, the muscle, or even the getaway driver – something never believed by anybody who had ever seen him drive – for everything from The Great Train Robbery to the famous escape of Mad Axeman Frank Mitchell from Dartmoor prison.

  Mark Piddle and a generation of keen young reporters before him had all heard the gossip, and attempted with varying degrees of enthusiasm to unearth the hidden truth – assuming there was one. But far from being revealed as a closet master criminal, if Bill Turpin had anything at all to hide, his tracks were superbly well covered. Consistent lack of success inevitably led to loss of interest for Mark, as it had to the other would-be Carl Bernsteins before him. None of them were ever known to have found out anything worth a line anywhere.

  Bill became regarded as a kind of mystery man, which he seemed almost to encourage and enjoy. Yet there appeared to be no mystery about his love life. Dorothy had indeed been the girl for him. The only girl. There was to be no other woman ever for Bill Turpin. He lived quietly for a while in his little house, and then gradually started to capitalise on the holiday trade which was on the up and up in Pelham Bay.

  He would never fish again – that was part of his other life – but he seemed to have the knack of spotting what holidaymakers wanted and making cash from it. He had brought money back from the war all right, and he knew how to invest it in a way of life he understood. He remained a shadowy figure to the rest of Pelham Bay, a man nursing a terminally broken heart, asking for help from nobody, and accepting none. He appeared to have no friends and sought none. He was the sole survivor of his immediate family. A cousin had sought him out soon after the war and been sent packing. Bill Turpin wanted nobody close to him, nobody knowing his business – and nobody did.

  He had come back from the war looking twenty years older than when he had left – yet the twenty-five years since then had barely altered him. Perhaps his back was a little more bent, but in 1970 Bill was still fit and strong in a slow sort of way. His eyes were a clear piercing blue and looked right through you. His head was bald, but so it had been when he came home in 1946, the crown of his head rubbed smooth by his tin helmet. The little hair left had whitened with the years, and his face appeared more leathery. That was all. Bill’s early life as a fisherman had already engraved his skin with deeply etched creases.

  He had become a landmark in Pelham Bay as the boss of a selection of seaside tourist-traps. He did not care how he looked or what people thought of him.

  Jip, his black labrador-collie cross, followed Bill everywhere, walking at the same ponderous pace just a foot or so from her master’s heels. Occasionally Bill would look down at the devoted dog and curse her in a mumbled growl.

  Winter and summer he wore a grimy trilby hat, the brim turned down all the way round, and it was his habit to wear the hat indoors and out. In the summer the trilby protected his bald head from the sun. Once or twice Bill had suffered a sunburned head. Nowadays the trilby was never removed. The deckchair boys would joke about how Bill must look standing naked. His face and body weathered ebony. The top of his head and his legs startling white.

  In winter he wore shirts with frayed collars beneath heavy cardigans and a big tweed overcoat with the collar turned up. The temperature of the day made little difference. He would don his thick winter layers and his heavy lace-up boots in early October, and stick to the overcoat and cardigans, however mild the climate, until shortly after the spring bank holiday. Then he would strip down to his baggy grey flannels, and, no matter how cold it might be, was rarely seen to put on a shirt, never mind a coat, until October.

  Occasionally when it rained he would unearth the ageing military riding mac which he had picked up somewhere on his travels during the war.

  ‘They don’t make coats like this any more,’ he would sigh, struggling into the stiff raincoat without bothering with a shirt beneath. The buckles were corroded and jammed almost solid, but Bill battled with them relentlessly. Then he would turn up the high collar and happily face any deluge, although, in reality, the old coat’s waterproofing power must have been long worn out.

  Bill’s life appeared to be devoted to the making of money, and spending was no real part of it. He had one good suit, although it did smell of mothballs, and a fairly respectable car, a five-year-old Morris 1300. And once a week in the winter he would spruce himself up in the dark grey suit, dress in the only shirt he possessed without a frayed collar, select one of half a dozen unexciting ties in dark blues and reds, and drive to market in Durraton.

  That was Bill’s big outing. He would buy all the meat and vegetables he needed for the following week, chat to the few tradesmen he knew, and spend the lunchtime in one of the market pubs playing euchre with dominoes. He enjoyed his market day outing every Tuesday, and would regularly down five or six pints of strong bitter. Then, as Tuesday was the only day of the week he ever had a drink, he would drive sedately but rather unsteadily home. You could get away with it in those days.

  In the summer, of course, there was no market-day excursion. Bill stayed steadily at his post, raking in the tourists’ cash, wandering contentedly among his money traps. There was the giant slide in the fairground. At two shillings for as many goes as you like, in half a season the huge, ugly, scaffolding-like contraption would have already paid for itself many times over.

  Then there was the bob-a-ride plastic elephant outside the public lavatory by the south-side putting green, and the belly boards and Malibu boards which Bill rented out from the deckchair stand. The slot machine paradise of Penny Parade, where nothing cost a penny any more, remained probably the most successful money-spinner of them all.

  Bill Turpin could afford his deceptively lazy air.

  The seaside life brought him in a small fortune every summer. In the winter he could put his feet up while inventing new ways of emptying the tourist purse. Not so long ago, visitors to Penny Parade would have been happy with a few fruit machines, a couple of penny rollers, an automatic shooting range, What the Butler Saw, and an elderly football table. By 1970 they were already demanding electronic bingo and elaborate light-flashing sensation instead of those simple golden-oldie games of carefully rigged chance. Whatever the customers called for, Bill Turpin gave them. And they paid for it over and over again.

  So the cash flowed on this particular Sunday in drought-hit Britain. It was a magical day of bright blue skies and wispy white clouds and the crowds swarmed to the seaside in the hope of finding a Spanish sun beating
down on English sand. But dear old Pelham Bay did not have a reputation for being the bleakest beach in North Devon for nothing. The wind was sending a sandstorm along the beach and whistling up the slipway which separates the pebble ridge stretching untidily northwards from the grand old sea wall to the south.

  By midday the crowds were streaming landward of the iron-grey pebble ridge to shelter from the tornado that in other seaside towns would have been a gentle breeze. They dug hollows in the pebbles on the burrows side of the ridge and stretched their bodies agonisingly over the stones. Ultimately the discomfort of their angular beds beneath, and the burning of the sun above given a knife edge by the wind from which there was never a true hiding place, drove them to seek other amusement. And when they surfaced from their pebble pits, the holiday hordes, skins reddened and blotchy now, strolled up and down the seafront determined to enjoy themselves regardless.

  With the true resolution of the British holidaymaker, they tucked into the local gastronomic delicacies, some not so delicate. The menu was varied: homemade ice cream, the artificial looking whip kings and pink-and-green rainbow-striped concoctions of the mass-produced sort, synthetic hot dogs, takeaway chow mein and chop suey, Wimpy-burgers, fish and chips in cardboard cartons, bottled cockles and mussels pretending to be fresh, toffee apples, lukewarm tea in paper cups, fizzy pop, candy floss, and drinks on a stick.

  Bill leaned with apparent idleness on the wall gazing at something floating in the sea. Or was there anything, right out across the bay beyond the rocks? There was just a speck in the distance. Bill’s eyes might be tired but when he stared out to sea he could spot what others missed: the way the tip of a wave curled, a patch of dark water maybe, or the whirl of a current. All clues of some kind to a true seaman.

  His face was screwed up tight against the bright light of midday glare.

  ‘Could be nought,’ he muttered.

  He swung slowly away from the wall and the sea beyond and strolled across the promenade to his deckchair stand.

  Johnny Cooke was over by the deckchairs watching old Bill through narrowed eyes. You could see his brain turning over, Johnny reckoned. What was he thinking, what was he plotting, what was he remembering as he stood there? Was he just counting his money in his head? That was what they all said, in Pelham Bay, and as one of Bill Turpin’s deckchair lads Johnny had plenty of opportunity to indulge in the fruitless pursuit of trying to read his boss’s mind. He could sense Bill’s ice cool gaze swinging towards him. Boring into him. Johnny smartly turned his back and returned to his other favourite pastime of looking the grockles up and down. Grockles, the holidaymakers who annually invaded his beautiful county, responsible for turning lovely seaside spots like Pelham Bay into glorified shanty towns. Them and the greed they inspired.

  A short, fat man, wearing the kind of Bermuda shorts that had been in fashion five years earlier, was struggling up the slipway. Behind him three small children were squabbling noisily, one in tears.

  ‘Go on, go on, here’s the money. Get yourself an ice cream and shut up, for Gawd’s sake,’ the man shouted.

  It was just a typical Sunday in Pelham Bay. The smell of fish and chips and hot-dog onions drowned the tang of the sea. The rattle of the fruit machines, the clamour of the fairground, the everlasting hubbub of family quarrels and playing children, could all be heard loud and clear above the roar of the waves.

  A couple of hours or more passed routinely. The sun, not quite so burning hot now, had moved around in the sky and shone on Johnny again. He basked in its gentler warmth. He felt drowsy.

  But suddenly he was startled out of his pleasant half-wakefulness by a piercing scream which rose above the holiday clamour and shattered his fleeting sense of peace forever. It was unnaturally high, a scream of almost inhuman shock and fear.

  Johnny jumped to his feet, no laziness about him now, and like all the holidaymakers around him, ran to the sea wall and peered in the direction of the screaming.

  It was Jenny Stone he could hear. Jenny Stone overcome with shock, yelling her heart out.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mark Piddle had arrived at the murder scene little more than a couple of hours after Jenny’s shock discovery. Jim Sykes had got the word long before the news had been officially released.

  You had to hand it to the old goat, thought Mark grudgingly. And he would have been even quicker if he hadn’t stayed at home after the phone call to give Irene one final seeing to. Mind you, that hadn’t taken long. He roared the Cooper into the heart of Pelham Bay, and grinned to himself. Not a bad life.

  He swung the Cooper, naked tyres squealing, into the sharp corner of the road down to the beach. It reached a dead end at the slipway, and to the right was a public car park. Mark was a keen surfer and a member of the surfing club, based in those days in the little wooden hut at the rear of the car park. He waved cheerily at the car park attendant. There was a kind of unofficial agreement that the surfers parked for free, but you had to keep the grumpy white-coated attendant sweet. A group of the lads were sitting forlornly outside the hut enjoying the sun, but despondent because that day, even in windy Pelham Bay, there was little or no surf.

  Mark parked and briskly walked the hundred yards or so to the deckchair stand in search of Bill Turpin. There was not much happened in Pelham Bay that Bill Turpin didn’t know about. Bill was not a gossip, and it was partly that which made his value as a contact so much greater to a reporter. If you could get the non-talkers to talk to you, then you were always on the verge of cracking the ‘big one’ – or so the Jim Sykeses of the newspaper world always promised.

  Mark picked himself a chair, set it up, and sat down next to Johnny Cooke.

  ‘Wotcher Casanova,’ he said.

  Johnny whistled a few unrecognisable notes and grinned at him. Mark was the only person who ever referred to Johnny’s court case of the previous year. Everyone else pretended it had never happened. Johnny would have preferred it to be out in the open, so that he could explain to anyone he cared enough about that it hadn’t been the way it seemed. It really hadn’t. He found the direct approach a welcome change. It made him feel comfortable with Mark. He knew Mark’s amusement was genuine. The reporter really couldn’t give a damn.

  He held out his hand. ‘That’ll be a bob for the deckchair, thank you,’ he said.

  ‘You have to be joking,’ replied Mark. ‘Where’s the Walt Disney of the West of England?’

  ‘On the prowl as usual. And if you don’t get out of that chair smartish he’ll make the pair of us into sausage meat for his hot dogs.’

  Mark produced a packet of Gauloises and lit one – it was more of an affectation than a habit.

  He puffed a cloud of smoke into the blue sky. ‘Your boss and me, we’re like that, mate.’ He held up his hand with two fingers crossed. ‘I’m telling you.’

  Johnny was saved from answering by the arrival of Bill Turpin who, chewing his foul-smelling pipe, seemed to materialise from nowhere. He had an uncanny knack of doing that.

  ‘Doing all right on that paper of yours, then, boy.’ A statement rather than a question.

  Mark started. ‘Yeah. Oh yeah.’

  ‘Well then, price of a deckchair won’t worry you. Johnny, give him a ticket.’

  Mark fished around in his pocket for change.

  There was no point in arguing with Bill Turpin. The old man chewed his pipe some more. ‘Discount for locals,’ he said. ‘That’ll be a tanner.’

  ‘Right,’ said Mark. ‘You’ve taken my last penny as usual, so what about some help? What do you know about this body, Bill? Is it on?’

  ‘’Tis on, lad, like I told the police…’ he began.

  That made sense, thought Mark. Bill would be first stop for the cops too.

  ‘I don’t know much worth telling. I was standing there by the ice cream van, just looking out over the sea wall and I could see something floating in the water…’ Bill’s voice trailed off. ‘Anyway, next thing I know Reg Stone’s maid is screaming h
er poor little heart out right across the bay.’

  ‘Reg Stone’s maid? The councillor?’

  ‘Yep. That maid of his is down here all summer with them mazed lot who lie around on the lavatory roof over by the lido.’

  ‘Oh I know that lot. Don’t think I know the girl though.’

  Mark had never even asked her name that night at the school dance. Unusually for him he could still remember every detail of his encounter with Jennifer Stone by the dustbins, although he had no idea who she was. He had been turned on by her to distraction, and it had been days before his excitement had died down.

  But the teacher who had interrupted that promising encounter, whilst not identifying Jenny who kept in the shadows, had identified Mark as he ran off. The school threatened Mark with the police if he ever went near one of their pupils again, and he was left in no doubt that if he tried to pursue the girl who had so aroused him, he would end up in jail. It was only because his father was the school chaplain that the police had not been called this time, he was told. He had shortly afterwards found Irene, and had been using her ever since as a poor but willing substitute. Nothing that he did to Irene ever seemed really to satisfy him. Yet the young body that had clung to him so eagerly in the dustbin yard had left a lasting impression.

  Mark had his notebook out now. ‘How does she fit into it all then?’

  ‘Found the body, poor maid. Out swimming.’

  ‘Hey, what a great line. I’d better have words with young Miss Stone…’

  ‘You’ll be bleddy lucky. Took her straight off to ’ospital. In a terrible state. Terrible.’

  ‘Shock, huh?’

  Mark turned to a clean page in his notebook, jotted down ‘Stone’ and began to doodle the letter S into an elaborate snake. He picked Bill’s brains about the time the body was found and any other details he could think of, but the older man was reticent, even for him.