Veil of Darkness

by Gillian White

  It would be of great assistance, announce the police, if they could locate the murder weapon, and so everyone at the Burleston joins the local force to stroll, head down, round the golf course, squinting down old rabbit holes.

  It is an anguished Avril, eyes protruding with horror, who begs Bernie, ‘I can’t stay here, at the hotel, not with all this…’ and she bursts into tears again.

  She goes on in a voice not in control, but breaking and gulping alternately, ‘Kirsty says I can go and stay in her caravan, it’s empty now, and Mother and Father are near by and they need me. They’re devastated of course, nothing seems to matter any more, not the book, not even poor Fluffy, but I hope you don’t think I’m deserting you.’ Still anxious to trouble no-one.

  This couldn’t have worked out better. Bernie struggles to hide her smiles. ‘You go, Avril, we’re fine without you, really, please don’t worry about us, I just can’t imagine the kind of hell you must be going through.’

  ‘Kirsty says you’re going this weekend…’

  ‘Yes, Dom and me.’ Bernie shivers in Avril’s presence as if she carries some hidden infection. If only she would shut up and go. Bernie ought to feel guilty as hell for being unkind and short with Avril, impatient with Avril and thoughtless with Avril, whose eyes are so deeply shadowed, whose cheeks seem thinner and older, and all because she suddenly can’t bear to have her near, may God forgive her.

  ‘But as soon as—’

  ‘I know.’ Now Avril sniffs unpleasantly in an effort to pull herself together. ‘As soon as the book gets published we can all be together again, be friends again, and by then the worst of this will be over.’

  At the sight of Avril’s tears, at the sight of Avril, defeated, bewildered and emptied, Bernie has to tighten her lips to stop herself from shouting at her, even from slapping her silly fat face. What is this sudden repulsion she feels towards a loyal friend? Instead she says, trying to be gentle, ‘It’s not your fault, Avril, this has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘It’s just odd, you know, coming from the same womb, being his sister, sharing a childhood, you know, someone who can take a life…’

  ‘I know, Avril, I know,’ says Bernie, tensing, coming to put her arms around her, and then it slowly dawns on Bernie that Kirsty had a good point—without Avril on hand, Avril, who has taken exams and who can write proper English, how in God’s name is she going to deal with the incomprehensible changes and corrections Clementine Davaine was talking about?

  The flat is in Arundle Mews.

  Bernie’s leave-taking of the Burleston required the empty kisses and promises that mean nothing at all. You would think Mr Derek was some close relative, you would think Mrs Stokes was a favourite granny, you would think the snooty residents were all part of some much-loved extended family the way they lined up to see their famous author off.

  ‘Yes, I will send you a signed copy.’

  ‘Yes, of course I’ll keep in touch.’

  ‘No, fame will never change me.’

  And Dominic held her hand and opened the car door for her—the perfect escort—and her departure was a very different occasion to her arrival those few months ago, when all she had was her rucksack and her floppy embroidered bag with a few bits and pieces in it. Then she went to the back door and dined on stale bread and cheese. Now she has just breakfasted on grapefruit segments, porridge and a delicious kedgeree.

  She waved from the car like the Queen Mother, but of Kirsty or Avril there was no sign.

  Candice had left an hour ago, driving back in her Saab and calling on friends for lunch. Dominic and Bernie were to be chauffeured to the airport and a car was already organized to meet them at Heathrow and take them to the flat.

  Life was suddenly oh so easy.

  She looked forward to London. Bernie came to London once when Mammy and Daddy won tickets to the Palladium at Christmas time. She saw the pantomime Cinderella with people from the telly in it and almost cried with all the excitement and glamour. It was then Bernie decided she wanted to be an actress, too; she panted to be one, she trembled to be one, but they went home the next day to their terraced house next to the cleaners having spent the night in a Trust House Hotel, and she ran straight up to her bedroom, locked the door, closed the curtains over the grimy glass and cried for over an hour.

  ‘Dom, tell me this is real.’

  She walks through the door with quiet dignity, erect, head up and one hand holding Dominic’s.

  This is what she has always dreamed of. This is the sort of house she will buy once she gets her hands on some money and she and Dom are married.

  The Mews flat is opulent and quiet. Thick Chinese rugs and jade lamps. Immense chairs with footstools. Elegant arrangements of flowers and impressive pictures dominated by a white grand piano. Good taste reigns supreme because nobody has to live in it for long. James Tate, Candice’s uncle, spends most of his life on the road. The peering, short-sighted woman who opens the door and introduces herself as Joyce Parfait, informs them dinner will be at eight thirty—turbot a la crème with mushrooms, the kind of food Bernie detests—and that she lives in the garage conversion.

  ‘Just press the bell if you need me.’

  ‘What are we going to do all day, Dom?’

  ‘Well, you’ll be needing to work, presumably. And I won’t be bored in London.’

  Work? Is Bernie expected to work? Here she is in London with very little money, just the odd handout from Candice or Dominic and only the promise of big things to come. She can hardly have a ball, she knows that, but is she really doomed to shut herself away from now until Christmas in some make-believe office with a computer she can’t work and with notes she can’t understand? And while Bernie is closeted away like this, what the hell will Dom be doing?

  Living the life of Riley?

  Cheating on her again?

  ‘There’s people I know in London,’ he says, seemingly surprised that she should ask. ‘Friends. Family friends. School friends. There are a few contacts I would like to make. I’ll join a sports club, play some squash, visit old haunts…’

  ‘But you never lived in London.’

  ‘No, but that doesn’t mean to say I’m a total stranger in the city.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Don’t sound so pissed off! You won’t want me hanging around once you get down to it again. Don’t worry, I promised Candice faithfully that I wouldn’t distract you. We’re all dependent on you now, Bernie.’

  Damn, damn, damn.

  ‘Down to it’ means sneaking to the post box with Clementine’s notes and odd pages of manuscript and telling Clementine she’s working on it. ‘Down to it’ means ringing Kirsty in a panic—but, Jaysus, Kirsty’s not on the phone! Why hadn’t they thought of that? Perhaps they can arrange a mobile? She must ask Candice next time she sees her. God, God, it would have been so much simpler if Avril had been able to come. At least she could have shared the secret, they could have worked out the problems together and Avril could have made the simpler amendments to the script herself.

  But Avril is contaminated and has become… repellent.

  And Kirsty has turned against Bernie.

  Bernie feels suddenly and worryingly alone, wrapped in helpless consternation and nothing but trip-wires strewn in her path.

  Damn Graham Stott. Because this is his fault. If that double murderer hadn’t turned up at the Burleston, Avril’s presence wouldn’t have posed such a threat to Bernie’s naughty-but-nice little girl image, and maybe her intense dislike wouldn’t have reached such giddy proportions.

  Damn him to hell.

  Nineteen

  SHE MUST BE LOSING her mind—like Bernie, too close to Magdalene, too haunted by those dire revelations, battered by the experience. Twice, now, Kirsty has mistakenly imagined she has seen Trevor—the first time she thought he was skulking down by the raspberry canes. She trembled while her heart stopped beating; she came near to wetting herself; she cried with relief when she saw it was just old Fl
agherty and the reason she made that mistake was because he was moving so slyly.

  ‘Rabbit, the varmint, I sees ’e,’ said he, brandishing his spade as a weapon while he crept on between the berries.

  On the second occasion Kirsty was helping unload the laundry van. She was laden with cold crispy sheets, lost in the glaring whiteness of them, pile after pile, almost to the point of snow-blindness. At once a dark image appeared, a shadow on her iris? She dropped the load and stood, dumb with terror, as a hare might, caught against the brilliance. Painfully, as her eyes adjusted, she could make out a cardboard cut-out man, a target for police marksmen, bobbing behind the privet.

  Her legs gave way. They would no longer hold her. The heat from the sun burned from inside her.

  For this is how Trevor had sometimes appeared when he snuck up to the house after work, hoping to catch her curled up with a book.

  ‘Maid,’ it was Flagherty’s voice again, pulling her out of her dream state as he passed the van with a full wheelbarrow and gave her a soily hand to grasp. ‘Look, yous dropped the lot. Push ’em down underneath so Mrs Stokes doan’ see ’e.’

  And when Kirsty’s terrified eyes went back to search the hedge there was nobody there.

  Now Trevor Hoskins hasn’t got where he is today by being dumb. Trevor is a man who likes to keep his nose to the ground, so when he reached the end of his journey, when he signalled right into the drive of the Burleston Hotel, and when he saw a line of policemen beating the overgrown hedges with sticks, he quickly righted his indicator and drove straight on.

  OK, so something’s up. Damn. He must be more circumspect; if the fuzz are alerted by a hysterical Kirsty—because she’s bound to lose her head when he first shows his face—he will be wrong-footed, and most likely booted out of the place before he has time to convince anyone.

  The next place Trevor came to along the winding coast road was a caravan park called Happy Stay and so he pulled in. He parked his hire car and went into the shop, where a pallid girl in a sundress was serving. Hell, all summer in Cornwall and no tan whatsoever. Whenever Trev gets the chance he rips off his top, and as a result his hands and arms are always tanned and healthy looking. As per usual, people are taking these bloody health warnings too far. Food, fireworks, drugs—when the kids were babies Kirsty refused to put them on their stomachs, and that’s why they bawled their bloody heads off all the time, that’s what Trev’s mother used to say.

  ‘They say there’s been a murder there!’ the girl replied breathlessly to Trevor’s first question. ‘They say it’s the golf pro, hit on the head with a golf club yesterday morning and they still haven’t found the weapon, or the killer. Mostly, down here, all we get is drownings or suicides off the Pengellis Rock.’ Her limp ponytail whisked in excitement and moved an assortment of black flies from off the greasy counter.

  ‘Is it OK to leave my car here and look round for a while before I book in? I guess you’ve got some spaces. I’ll only want something small.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the girl, tonguing her gum, ‘that’s OK, so long as you’re back by six, we close dead on six.’ Click, click, click, she went, her tongue sticking through stretched pink peppermint. She’s probably in-bred. Trev believes that anyone brought up in the country is in-bred and thus a potential monster. Look at Fred West.

  Trevor, casual in jeans, a T-shirt and trainers, padded his way along soulless roads of concrete, like an abandoned airfield with mobile homes and brambles crammed upon it, and soon found the cliff path where a few families were blackberrying. Oh yeah. Great holiday, thought Trev.

  But Trev wouldn’t know what a great holiday was. He and Kirsty and the kids only went once, to Weston. They met this other couple in the caravan next door. Christ, she was a randy cow, and the bloke, what was his name? Gavin? Yeah, that was it, Gavin and Elaine. They had no kids, and they grew quite chatty when they sat drinking beer outside the van when it was warm in the evenings and the kids were in bed. He and Gavin sometimes left the wives and popped down to the pub. Kirsty moaned on as usual, trying to spoil everything. She didn’t like Elaine because Elaine was cheap. God. Gavin must have been pretty pissed when he suggested that card game—he and Elaine got up to it all the time back in Harlow where they lived. What a laugh, said Gavin, telling Trev all about it.

  ‘D’you think your Kirsty’d be up for it?’

  ‘Strip poker?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why not?’ It was about bloody time Kirsty let her hair down and let him have some fun once in a while.

  They went to Gavin’s caravan and even then Kirsty complained about leaving the kids alone. ‘There’s fires in caravans…’

  ‘Shut up! We’re only next door for fuck’s sake.’

  They had a good laugh, drank like fishes, and then Gavin fetched the cards. Scruffy, they were, and gone all soft like cards do when they’re played with a lot. There was lots of giggling from the girls and that wild Elaine was throwing her hair back and showing her boobs in that low dress. When it was Kirsty’s turn she was happy to take off her cardigan, then her sandals. By then Elaine was in her underwear and still going strong. Trev couldn’t keep his eyes off her; he could smell her wet excitement, what with the heat and the booze and the sex that fizzed in the air along with the paraffin fumes.

  Kirsty gave him a wounded look, the kind of smile that’s on the Mona Lisa, the kind of smile you want to wipe off because there’s something so bloody smug about it. ‘No, I don’t want to go any further, Trev.’

  ‘Come on now, honey,’ he wheedled and Gavin clicked his tongue and winked.

  ‘I think we should go back now.’

  ‘Dammit,’ Trev hadn’t meant it to sound that savage, ‘Christ, you bitch. Get your fucking skirt off before I come over there and rip it off you. D’you think you’re so sodding special or something? Different from Elaine here? All coy is it, you cow! You’re bleeding well not going to show me up and go all righteous on me. You’ll do what I want or God help you later.’

  So they played the game of poker. And the next night. And the next. But Kirsty fucked it up with her miserable face and her sighs and her lack of spontaneity. She wouldn’t know a good time if it hit her in the face. And the morning after that she sneaked home with the kids on the train.

  Trev breathed in deeply. So near yet so far. Aha—the stillness of sea and sky. The wash of the spray on the rocks below, and the gulls and the caves and the flaming bracken. Trev passed strange chimney stacks perched on the cliffs, broken-down ruins overgrown with ivy, and old tracks he could only just make out in the earth. Something to do with old mine workings, he thought, walking on, getting nearer now, sensing his quarry.

  He had to catch her alone, that was the most important thing. He knew Kirsty was living in at the hotel, so all Trev had to do was discover the number of her room and wait there quietly until she came. Never again would Kirsty cross him. Never again would that batty cow snatch his kids and do a bloody runner making him look like a right tit.

  Kirsty convinced herself she hadn’t seen Trev, there was no way he could find her. But after those two false alarms Kirsty’s nerves stayed raw all day. She knew there was something wrong and it wasn’t just Ed’s murder or Avril’s devastation over her brother’s unspeakable crime. No, this was something that gnawed at her subconscious like a childhood smell she couldn’t identify, or the line of a song she had once heard but couldn’t quite recall. She couldn’t concentrate on her work, and it wasn’t to do with Bernie’s departure, although there were many disturbing aspects to that—at least she has control of that situation. A phone call to the spineless Dominic, a few threats to expose him for the sham he was had worked the first time and there’s no reason to suspect her influence over him will diminish. She has him by the short and curlies.

  Before reading that haunting book blackmail would never have crossed Kirsty’s mind. She would never have found the nerve to corner the cad in that bland café. And it seemed to have given her visionary powers;
how else would she have guessed how Bernie’s easy nature would change, how she would become unbalanced by fame, revelling in her newfound role, how she would flaunt herself and her moment as if she was owed it.

  And now Bernie foolishly believes that Dominic has changed.

  Kirsty views her with contempt. How blind and ignorant she is to be so easily deceived.

  Yes, Dominic is serving his purpose and Kirsty has Magdalene to thank for that.

  But no, it was none of these things that caused Kirsty’s unease that day. Maybe it was because of the children’s imminent arrival, and the fear that something would go wrong to spoil it. So far she had coped so well, with the job, finding a home, pulling a fast one over the eyes of so many experts with her rewrite of Magdalene. Is she getting too confident? She is way out of her league and it’s sod’s law something will happen to bring her down to earth with a crash.

  She saw him.

  This time she was certain.

  So. She was lost. It was all over. He had run her to earth like a terrified rabbit.

  She was sure that she smelled him first.

  So, her reality was distorted, she had been living on dreams again. And a hopeless sorrow filled her eyes.

  She saw him sitting on one of the benches overlooking the tennis courts.

  How? How could he have found me?

  She saw him from the back, but she knew, oh yes, she knew it was Trevor.

  Oh, God help me. God, tell me what to do.

  But the next time she looked with her darting eyes he was gone.

  ‘Yes,’ says Kirsty to the copper, looking out the key to the cottage that was to have been her winter home. ‘Yes, of course I’ll let you in.’

  She leads the way across the drive and through the trees to the ugly breeze-block bungalow, still shaking from her last sighting of Trevor and trying with a numb desperation to convince herself she had been mistaken.

  ‘It’s just here,’ she tells the two searching police men. ‘It’s a bit of a mess.’