River Deep

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘No. No,’ he’s saying part to me, part into the phone. ‘Don’t you worry about that. You just drop me off at the roundabout services. There’s a tree on the verge. I can stand under that. My wife will pick me up.’

  ‘No need,’ I says. ‘Don’t drag her out on a night like this.’

  ‘I’d like to drag her out, so drop me off at the tree.’”

  The tape was silent although still whirring. Even though this was reported speech it was as though Haddonfield himself had spoken. A sharp rap of an order hiding behind venom worthy of a superbitch.

  Wendy’s voice again. “Then what happened, Evan?”

  “I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable now. Don’t quite know what to say. He starts talking into his mobile phone again. I turn the radio down so he can hear. “

  “What is he saying?”

  “He’s talkin’ very low. I can’t quite hear him. I keep lookin’ at him but he’s quiet now. Puts the phone back in his pocket. Ten minutes later I see the tree by the roundabout. He jumps out, pulls his collar right up. ‘Thanks,’ he says. I drive off, watching him in my mirror. Just standing.”

  Wendy Aitken leaned forward and flicked the off switch. Martha watched her, puzzled. There was nothing there.

  There was a knock on the door. It was Alex Randall, hesitating in the doorway. Wendy bounced up and introduced herself.

  “We’ve been listening to the tape,” Martha said, “of Evan Watkins’ account of picking up the hitchhiker and taking him from Shrewsbury to Oswestry.”

  Wendy Aitken still had that same, confident smile. “This will interest you, Inspector Randall,” she said, pulling out a cellophane file from her briefcase. She laid a photograph on the table, flicking it down as though she was producing an ace. A man in an England t-shirt, pint of lager in his hand, arm wrapped around a blonde, huge grin. He was toasting the picture-taker.

  “I showed this photograph to Watkins,” she said. “He couldn’t be absolutely positive about it but he doesn’t think this is the guy he picked up that night.”

  Randall and Martha stared.

  “Which is very strange,” she carried on seamlessly. “Because this is a recent photograph of Clarke Haddonfield.”

  13

  The three of them simply gawped at each other for a few minutes.

  Martha spoke first. “This is such a complex case,” she said to both of them. “In fact my head’s reeling. I’m only glad I’m not investigating it. But if it wasn’t Clarke Haddonfield in the cab that night who on earth was it? Where is he and what connection does the man impersonating Haddonfield have with Gerald Bosworth? Or with James Humphreys for that matter.” Randall moved forward as though to speak but she interrupted him. “I don’t think Humphreys is quite out of the picture yet. Well – I suppose you two are simply going to have to work together. And in some ways start all over again.”

  Alex and DI Aitken both nodded. They were slowly adjusting to new facts, asking themselves other questions. Who had climbed into the cab that night?

  “I thought it seemed a bit obvious introducing himself,” Aitken said. “I mean – you wouldn’t normally when you were picked up hitching, would you?”

  A sudden flash of a memory. She and Martin struggling with huge rucksacks into the back of a Mini, holding out their hands. Martin. Martha.

  “You might, sometimes.” She blinked the memory away.

  “So the search for Clarke Haddonfield continues?” DI Aitken nodded. “And you’ve still found no connection between Bosworth, Haddonfield and Humphreys?”

  Randall shook his head.

  “There are rules in medicine,” Martha said slowly, as much to herself as to the other two, “that discourage coincidence, that lead us to expect that coexisting symptoms have a common connection. Given two emerging pathologies you learn to look for one cause. Strikes me, Alex,” she said, smiling at him, “that this case should be governed by the same rules. I don’t believe in murders and disappearances from one small town happening in the same night being coincident – particularly when a false name is deliberately strewn across our path. I don’t want to interfere but it may well be that our ‘Mr Haddonfield’ with the nice manners and the mobile phone could well be your killer. And if there was someone on the other end of that mobile phone possibly it was an accomplice and nothing whatsoever to do with Mrs Haddonfield.”

  He nodded. “I do have some ideas,” he said finally to Aitken. “Certainly we should be pooling our work.” He stood up sharply, anxious to be gone.

  They had both left in minutes, bristling with long tick-lists, leaving Martha with nothing physical to do. Except dig. She rang Mark Sullivan.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got any further with the sternal wound?”

  “Martha,” a touch of humour in his voice. “Who’s investigating all this?”

  “Alex and DI Wendy Aitken of Oswestry police.”

  Sullivan chuckled. “You could have fooled me.”

  She confessed. “Well – I am dying to find out what’s going on. I’d love to be investigating, Mark. Instead I’m chained to the confines of my job.”

  “There’s nothing to stop you making a few little tentative enquiries of your own.”

  She knew he was smiling on the other end of the phone. “Stop inciting me, Mark.”

  “I’m not. I’m simply suggesting you play a more active part in the case.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.” He was losing interest. “Say you’re willing to be present at questioning.”

  “I can’t. It wouldn’t be ethical.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

  It was a dismissal. Martha reminded him that the inquest was the following day, said goodbye, put the phone down and straightaway dialled Alex’s mobile. He answered tersely, “DI Randall.”

  “Alex, it’s Martha. I just wanted to tell you. If I can be of any help you will call, won’t you?”

  “Of course. If I think of anything.” He was bound by the same constraints as she. “We’re just heading to Chester, to re-interview Mrs Bosworth. We’ve rung and warned her we’re on our way.” He gave a heartfelt sigh. “I don’t mind telling you I think in this case we’re somehow all missing the point. I haven’t even thought what questions I’m going to ask Mrs Bosworth that I haven’t already covered. The solicitor is a family friend and is … solicitous to say the least. I don’t think I’m going to achieve anything by this long and very tedious journey.” He paused. “Something tells me the answer is nearer home. Back here in Shropshire.”

  The next words were spoken so softly that afterwards Martha convinced herself she must have imagined them. But she held on to them all the same and revisited them again later. “I wish you could be here with me. I could do with a bit of direction.” Couldn’t we all?

  “Hang on a minute, Coroner.” He was giving directions to the driver.

  He was back. “I think I’ve learned that where money is concerned people will do all sorts of things to keep it.” It was a cryptic remark. “I’ll be in touch, Martha.”

  “You can always use my …” But the line was dead.

  And who knows who might have been listening.

  Martha sucked in a deep breath, watched the trees outside her window waving in a blasting gale and forced herself to move on. Work was piling up. She should not spend too much time and energy on one case when she had so many to consider. She worked steadily for three hours, barely looking up when Jericho replaced empty mugs of coffee with full ones. By early afternoon her desk was almost empty and she could allow herself to think again.

  She recalled Watkins’ voice, the slow, ponderous, pedantic words describing picking up the hitchhiker. She half-closed her eyes to picture the scene, to renact it with the remembered words. And saw more, filling in details which had been merely implied. The road glossy with bouncing rain, the threat of the waters flooding, panic of being cut off, the deceitful sheen sweeping the road’s surface that could conceal millimetr
es or inches or even feet of water and kill the internal combustion engine stone dead.

  The answer was in the water. It had lapped at the cellar steps, flushed Bosworth’s body from its hiding place, somehow hidden Clarke Haddonfield only to vomit up someone else. Some mystery person who had, in turn, vanished back behind stairods of rain.

  Water.

  So what had been the point of it all? She had always considered murder to be a sequential, logical crime. Even random killings were a result of a killer’s personality. He would kill at some point. It was written in the darkest corner of his character. The only random, unpredictable factor was who would die, when and where. And planned, clever murders were born out of a collision between circumstance. The usual motives. Greed, fear, love, hate. Sometimes combinations of all four. So what was this? Really? A crime passionel? Really? It was possible.

  So from motive to mechanics. Where was Clarke Haddonfield? Was he alive or dead – like Bosworth. Is it really possible to hide a body? To destroy flesh and bone completely? Of course. There are ways to do it. But to be effective, suspicion needs to be diverted. The eyes should be deflected so friends and family believe their loved one is still alive. But always somewhere else. Just beyond the horizon, the other side of the hill, there when you are here, always elsewhere. So the hitchhiker’s journey had been that – a deflection. A clumsy one but had it not been for Wendy Aitken’s persistence, egged on by her, it might have worked. And now she felt restless because she could do so little. She needed to walk off her frustration.

  She parked at Gay Meadows, paid her pound and crossed the English Bridge. No red sky tonight or Munch’s Scream. The wind had subsided. The river today was picture-postcard peaceful, gliding smoothly, graced with swans and one, solitary canoeist ruggedly ignoring the cold weather, sculling along with the grace of all sports – properly executed. She watched him for a moment, thinking of Sam and his football, somehow knowing that at the back of her mind she had reached her decision.

  We are given ten talents. It is up to us to use those talents, to take them to the heights written in our minds and in our bodies. Not everyone could possibly be a footballer. Her son had been given that subtle combination of muscles and skill.

  She turned left along Marine Terrace to stand in front of number seven.

  She too had been given talents – of curiosity, of intrigue, of an insatiable desire to unravel tangled skeins of wool to restore order, peace, ensure justice for the dead and for the living. So she allowed her eyes to feed her brain. All external signs of the drama were gone. There was no police tape. No loitering Press. No curious bystanders. The house looked an innocent, pretty, blue-painted cottage; the one she and Martin had seen all those Christmases before.

  And yet. She peered down between her feet. There was a grille on the floor, a wired window beneath, the well filthy with flood debris, mud, leaves, sodden paper. Beneath must be the cellar. She was tempted to kneel down and look. But it would not do. People were walking past. She looked down again and wondered. She would have thought the police would have cleared this grille.

  She left Marine Terrace. It would yield no secrets to her. Instead she turned and on impulse started up the hill. But even Finton Cley’s shop was closed this afternoon. She tried the door in frustration. No opening times were displayed. Something told her he would resent such a straitjacket. She returned to her car and the office. None of the messages were from either Alex or Mark. She picked up her work.

  There were other deaths.

  14

  It was a relief to re-enter the real world, to arrive home and be greeted by Agnetha, Sukey and Sam. The house was lively, full of light and music. Life. Sukey grabbed her hand the moment she walked in through the door. “Come and see, Mum.” Martha followed her into the sitting room. The furniture had been pushed back. Agnetha took up position centre floor, in bell-bottomed trousers and a tank-top.

  “Right,” Sukey ordered. Agnetha took two steps, pressed play on the video. And the action began.

  Super Trooper filled the air and the pair of them did the dance routine in time with the foursome on the TV screen, arms swinging, back to back, one at right angles to the other, and turn to the front again, Sukey prompting occasional directions. They must have been practising this one for hours. When they had finished, breathless and exhilarated, Martha clapped loudly and enthusiastically.

  Sukey tugged her arm again. “Agnetha’s going to make me a stage costume, Mum. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s great.” She allowed herself a swift reflection. Had she been a stay-at-home mum would she have spent this amount of time with her daughter? Doing this? Was this, possibly, a recommendation for au pairs? She glanced around. “Where’s Sam gone?”

  “Back to his bedroom.” Neither seemed interested. Agnetha pressed play again and they continued their dance routine. Martha climbed the stairs with the familiar heaviness of the burden of guilt. Life was so difficult for Sam. No dad, mum at work most of the time, sister and au pair practically forming their own tribute band.

  Martha knocked on his door.

  His “come in” sounded glum.

  The room was festooned in Liverpool red and white, pictures of Michael Owen, Heskey, Redknapp and Babbel. But mainly Michael Owen. Schoolboy’s hero. Action shots rather than line-ups. In most of them he looked as though he was grimacing in pain. Sam was sitting on his bed, leafing through a sports magazine. He hardly looked up. “Hi, Mum.”

  She sank down on the bed, next to him and he closed the magazine, looked at her, sensing she was about to say it.

  She didn’t speak for a moment or two but searched his face, loving him terribly, knowing his father would have done too, yet here she was, a lone, perceptive witness to his growing up.

  “Anything the matter, Mum?”

  She just wanted to hug him. Tell him all these things. And more. Instead she laughed and made what the twins called ‘one of her faces’.

  “No. I just wanted to have a word about this sports school your teacher’s so keen on.”

  “Mr Grant?” He turned away.

  “Mmm. Sam. Do you want to go?”

  And Sam was, suddenly, disturbingly, a small boy again, vulnerable. “I don’t know, Mum.” He stared at his slippers now. Huge, red and white footballs made of foam with the Liverpool logo on. “I don’t know if I’m really good enough.”

  Does anyone ever know the answer to this question. What is this movable goalpost of ‘good enough’?

  His eyes were wide open. Asking her with an unchildish depth behind the hazel irises. “How can I know if it’s the right decision?” Another stare at the slippers accompanied by a gulpy swallow. “What would Dad have wanted, do you think?”

  Martha shook her head. She could not know either. It was up to both of them to guess. To leave Shrewsbury and attend a sports school and then fail would be a double whammy. Family, friends, education would all have been sacrificed for The Game. If The Game then let him down the sacrifice would finally have been for nothing. Even to succeed in the luck-and-champagne world of professional sport could be less than the blessing it might seem. Success was fleetingly transient, and even at its peak not always the source of happiness. There was the spectre of injury at any time – in any game – in the fragment of a second. An unwise or unfortunate move could earn them revulsion from their ‘adoring’ fans. But the counter-balance was worse – not to have tried – to have waived the chance because of fear of failure. And so she helped her son to decide.

  “Sam,” she said very softly, hesitating before putting her arm around him and drawing him to her. “I love you hugely. You’re my only son and I don’t have your dad any more. You and Sukey are all I have of him except memories and photographs. And that dreadful video of him taking the pair of you for a walk in the buggy. My temptation is to keep you close to me, to protect you from everything. Life. But that would be unforgivably selfish and I don’t think it would necessarily be the best thing for you. I don�
��t even think it’s what Dad would have wanted. If you’re that good, if Mr Grant thinks you may have a chance of succeeding professionally, I think you should at least try.” She was more decisive now she had voiced it. “Maybe you should give it your best shot. I would not be a good mum if I stopped you from fulfilling your potential for selfish reasons. It would be wrong.”

  “You won’t mind my not living at home?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I’ll mind. I’ll mind a lot. But I mustn’t be selfish. If it doesn’t work out you can always come home. I’ll always be here but the opportunities won’t. They’ll pass you by.” She stared deep into his eyes. “If you don’t grab the chance now, Sam Gunn, it won’t come again. It will pass you by and you may regret it. Maybe for all your life. You’ll never know what might have been.”

  He nodded, eyed one of the pictures of Michael Owen – the one where he looked the youngest – barely fourteen – and smiled at his idol. “When will you see Mr Grant?”

  “I’ll ring him tomorrow.”

  Sam jumped off the bed, his load lightened. “Great. What’s for tea?”

  It was an hour later while they were tucking into salmon and asparagus pasta that Agnetha covered her mouth. “I don’t know where Bobby’s been digging,” she said, laughing, “but he has been bringing home the most extraordinary things.”

  It was as though a stone had thumped on the table. For some reason Martha felt chilled. “Like what?”

  “An old record. In his mouth. He must have found it in some old rubbish dump, or something.”

  Martha put her knife and fork down. “There isn’t a rubbish dump anywhere near here, Agnetha. Anyway – Bobby doesn’t go out alone. Hardly.”

  “Well it’s a filthy old thing. I put it in the laundry. It’s covered in mud. Absolutely disgusting. I left it in the sink. It’s an old forty-five though.” She winked at Sukey. “And I wish he wouldn’t bring dead little animals and put them on the doorstep too as though they were gifts.”