Weirdo

by Cathi Unsworth

  “Top of the morning to you, Mr Ward,” Rivett’s voice rang in his ear. “What can I do you for today?”

  “Morning, Len,” said Sean. “I was wondering, do you think you can get your hands on some swab kits for me?”

  “I reckon,” Rivett sounded intrigued, which was what Sean had been hoping. “Mind if I ask what you want them for?”

  “All Corrine’s KAs you gave me yesterday,” Sean walked towards his car. “The bikers and the drinkers from Swing’s. I was wondering whether, as a sign of good faith and their own innocence, they might like to volunteer a sample, just so we can rule them out of any further enquiries.”

  “I like your thinking, boy,” said Rivett. “How many d’you need?”

  “Six should do it,” Sean said, though at the moment, he was only interested in two. “D’you reckon DCI Smollet will be OK with that, or should I have a word with him first?”

  “Don’t you worry about him,” again, Rivett responded as expected. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Thanks, Len,” Sean unlocked the car door and slid inside. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours. If I’m running any later, I’ll let you know.”

  “I can make a start on it for you, if you want,” Rivett sounded hopeful. “I do miss the thrill of getting shiftless toerags out of bed in the mornings.”

  “All right then,” said Sean. “How about starting with Messrs Woodhouse, Hall and Prim?” He couldn’t help but smile at the real surnames of men who preferred to call themselves Whiz, Psycho and Scum.

  “Their check-ups are long overdue,” Rivett concurred. “Consider it done. See you back at the office?”

  “Yeah. Cheers, Len. See you then.” Sean cut the call, happy. He didn’t expect any of them to be a match, but it would keep the old sweat occupied, and more importantly, feeling as though he was in charge of things, for the morning. Sean intended to make good use of this time, starting with his visit to Paul Gray.

  Under scudding clouds, he drove back down towards the station, turning right when he got to the roundabout, across the top of the market and down into Nelson Road Central. Past the long walls of the cemetery, where, according to one press report he’d read, Corrine had once sat up a tree, trying to conjure up the Devil.

  The streets turned residential after this. Sandringham Avenue was in an area known as Newtown, built in the ’30s, neat rows of mock-Tudor cottages under bare trees.

  Gray had the front door open before Sean was halfway up the garden path. He was as tall as a man had to be to get in the force in his day, still lean and with a face that wasn’t easily forgotten; high cheekbones and a hooked nose, startling, pale blue eyes under black brows. His hair would have been that colour once, now it was grey, cut short and neat, brushed off a high widow’s peak.

  “You must be Mr Ward,” he said, offering a long, cool hand to shake. “Paul Gray.”

  “Thanks for seeing me, sir,” said Sean. “I hope not to take up too much of your time.”

  “D’you want to come in?” Gray’s gaze was penetrating and his handshake was brief.

  “Well, I was wondering,” said Sean, “if we could go for a drive instead.”

  “Oh?” Gray frowned. “Where to?”

  “I’d like to see the murder site,” said Sean. “I know it’s not far from here, and I have looked for it on the map. Only, I’d rather go there with someone who knows the territory. I thought we could talk on the way.”

  Gray stood in silence for a second, assessing both Sean and his words. He looked like a hawk, Sean thought, a man who was good at keeping a still surface. It was a trait that Sean had often noted in men of his father’s generation. Not so frequently of his own.

  “Len in’t run you out there, yet, then?” Gray said.

  Sean shook his head. “He’s been too busy digging up old files for me.”

  “I see,” said Gray. “Well, all right then. Let me just get my coat.”

  * * *

  “That’s a pretty bleak spot,” said Gray. “As you’d most probably expect.”

  They had stopped in a pub car park, the other side of a bridge that marked the end of Newtown, a few roads north of Gray’s address. The Iron Duke was the last hostelry in Ernemouth, on the end of Marine Parade. Behind it was a middle school that backed onto the racecourse. In front of it, only the beach and the sea.

  “We’ll have to walk from here,” Gray undid his seatbelt, “but that in’t far. Be a bit bracing, mind you.”

  Sean got out of the car, the wind raw in his face. Above their heads, a flaking portrait of the Duke of Wellington creaked on its hinges. On the horizon, the wind farm, rows of giant turbines, their blades turning rapidly against the wind.

  “Used to do a lot of stake-outs in this pub,” Gray did up the top button of his black overcoat. “Thieves bringing in stolen goods and hiding them out here. Between the beach,” he swept his arm in an arc that took in a hundred and eighty degrees of the landscape, “the field behind the school and the racetrack, there’s plenty of opportunity. There’s a holiday park beyond that and I in’t joking, that was always filled with villains, too.” He shook his head. “Talk about a busman’s holiday.”

  Gray led the way from the car park and down the steps from the sea wall out onto the dunes, Sean falling into step beside him, wishing he had a thicker coat, bowing his head against the wind. The sand was soft underfoot and he soon felt out of breath.

  “What made you come out here that day?” asked Sean.

  Gray’s brow furrowed, but his eyes stayed locked to the horizon.

  “I’d been out here not long before,” Gray recalled, “on the May Day bank holiday weekend. I’d been at the school the Saturday night; George Clifton, the old headmaster, needed some assistance. School was always getting done over. George had an alarm that went straight to the station, he ended up out here most weekends.

  “Anyway,” Gray reached the top of a dune, “this time, he’d found a family camping out on his field.” He turned to Sean with a wry smile. “Not the kind that were inclined to move when he asked ’em nicely. So I dropped by, introduced ’em to one of our dogs. Said I’d let him off the leash if they didn’t get out of it. They soon changed their minds.

  “So after we seen them off,” he went on, “I got back to the car and another call was going out, local resident reporting a party on the dunes. I was the nearest to it and I had the dog, so I took it. You could already see bonfire smoke rising over that way,” he pointed northeast and Sean could make out a flat, grey concrete roof in the middle of a gulley. “Found a whole bunch of them weirdos down there, having a party.”

  He stopped again, on the top of another dune, letting Sean catch up. Lost in his memories, he hadn’t seemed to notice his companion was struggling. But now a look of concern softened his eyes. “You all right, boy?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Sean nodded, “don’t mind me, I’ve got gammy legs, but I’ll be OK. Please, go on with your story.”

  “You sure? Well,” Gray nodded, “Corrine Woodrow was one of ’em. So, when Len told me one of them lot had gone missing, that’s the first place I thought of, reckoned that was their hideout.” He stopped, a look of pain passing over his features. “I was right, and all.”

  “It can’t be easy …” Sean began.

  But Gray had resumed walking. “Look,” he pointed ahead, “here we are.”

  Sean followed him down another dune. The old sea defence was sunk between two humps, sand nearly piled up to the slit where the soldiers of the ’40s would have set up their machine gun. The concrete was pockmarked, covered in yellow lichen, ragwort sprouting from the cracks and crevices.

  “We go in this way,” Gray ducked under a doorway.

  It was dark inside, took a few moments for their eyes to accustomise to the gloom, while the lamentations of the wind shrilled in their ears.

  “You’d come across Corrine before, hadn’t you?” Sean asked.

  “A few times,” Gray said. “She didn’t exactly
come from a good home. Her mother was what you might call notorious.”

  “Yeah,” said Sean, “so I’ve heard. But there was one time in particular …”

  Gray lifted his index finger to silence him.

  “Hold you hard,” he said, “just a second.”

  He crouched down. “Don’t move no further,” he said. “Ha’ you got a torch with you?”

  Sean fumbled in his bag. His hands seemed to have turned into two blocks of ice during their short walk here.

  “Hang on,” he said, fishing it out. “Here,” he passed it down.

  “Look at this.” Gray switched the flashlight on, ran it across the floor.

  Someone had been here before them. Swept all of the sand off the concrete floor and then, right in the middle of it, they had drawn some kind of diagram.

  “My godfathers,” said Gray.

  A white pentagram, that glistened as the torch beam ran over it.

  Sean stooped down for a better look, resting his hands on his knees. As he did, a musky scent filled his nostrils. Of lilac, lavender and cloves.

  “Funny,” said Gray, touching it with the tip of his finger. “That look like,” he lifted up his finger to his nose, small grains falling as he did so, “salt.”

  He took a cautious lick. “Yeah,” he said, spitting it out. “That is salt.” He put his hand down again, swirling the line with his finger. “They’ve drawn it in salt.”

  He looked at Sean. “This has been done recently. Another day or so and the wind would have blown sand in over it. And what’s this?” he leaned forwards. “Wax,” he said, poking at a congealed substance in the middle of the diagram. “Candles.”

  Gray stood up, running the beam of the torch across the walls. Stopped when it picked out a dark, pear-shaped object suspended from under the look-out slit.

  Without a word, both men walked forwards, picking their footsteps between the lines of the pentagram. Gray reached it first, lifted it up in the palm of his hand.

  “Well, I’ll be …” he said.

  It was an effigy, a little doll, of a man wearing a black coat and a black trilby with a feather in the side. Hung there on a length of string, tied around an old rusty nail and fashioned into a noose around its neck. A brace of coloured pins stuck into it.

  For a long, drawn-out minute, Sean and Gray stared at each other, the wailing wind making such an eerie soundtrack that each one felt the hairs prickling up along the back of their necks. Then Gray let go of the doll.

  “Black magic?” said Sean, thinking of Noj.

  Gray whistled. “Or someone’s seriously taking the piss.”

  His cool surface was shattered. The look on his face was one of pure shock.

  “The book,” Sean pressed the advantage. “Corrine had a book with her when you caught her that time, with the pervert under the pier. A book of black magic.”

  “So I been told,” said Gray, still staring at the effigy of his former boss. “Only …”

  He stopped himself, turned his face back to Sean’s, his eyes hardening again.

  “Who you been talking to?” he said. “Who else know why you’re here?”

  Noj had not been lying. The book she had told Sean about had not been mentioned in any of the old case files, not even Sheila Allcott’s report that he’d been over with a fine tooth-comb the night before.

  “No one,” he said. “You’re my first interview. Len Rivett, DCI Smollet and an old guy called Alf Brown in Records are the only other people I’ve spoken to so far.”

  Gray’s eyes narrowed, a frown creasing his forehead. He looked as if he was on the verge of saying something but then thought better of it, shaking his head, turning instead to continue running the torch around the pillbox.

  “Well,” he said, his eyes following the beam of light, “at least we in’t got another dead body in here. Just some bloody sick bastard …”

  He switched it off, handed it back to Sean. “You want to show Len what we found in here,” he said, referring to Rivett as if he were the officer in charge again. “But if you don’t mind, I’ve seen enough.”

  It took Sean a while to snap off some shots of the scene, then fumble on the plastic gloves, bag up the effigy, a sample of the salt and the candle wax. By the time he stepped out onto the beach, Gray was halfway back to The Iron Duke, a stick figure of a man in a long black coat striding rapidly across the dunes.

  Sean found him waiting by the steps up the sea wall, the rims around his eyes redder than they had been before, although that could have been the wind.

  “Sorry,” Gray said. “That was unprofessional.”

  “It’s all right,” said Sean. “It’s not what I was expecting to find there either.”

  “No,” Gray shook his head. “No,” he repeated.

  “Well,” said Sean, putting his hand on the railings. “I’d better let them know at the station, they might want to get some forensics. You never know, there could be a match here for the person I’m looking for. Let me run you back first, though.”

  “Actually,” Gray put his hand on top of Sean’s arm, “I can see myself home, if you don’t mind. I’d rather be on my own for a while.”

  “Sure,” said Sean. “It must have been a shock …”

  “Yeah,” Gray nodded rapidly, lifting his hand and looking embarrassed. “You could say that. But listen,” he looked at Sean earnestly. “I’m sure you want to ask me some more questions and that’s fine. Only do us a favour and ring me on my mobile.”

  “OK,” Sean nodded, taking his own out. “Let me put the number into mine.”

  “It’s just the wife,” said Gray. “I don’t want her to have to think about all that again …” He glanced back in the direction of the pillbox.

  He looked shell-shocked. Sean wondered how much of it was what they had just found and how much of it bad memories resurfacing. It didn’t do to make snap judgements, but Sean had felt more comfortable around Gray than anyone else here so far.

  He shook the older man’s hand, pressing his card into it as he did, which Gray registered with a brief nod. Then he waited by the side of the car until Gray had disappeared over the bridge, thinking of fatherless children, the circumstances that connected his nemesis in Meanwhile Gardens to Corrine Woodrow and finally, to himself. The reason he tended to look up to men like Gray, like Chief Superintendant Charlie Higgins.

  He pressed familiar digits on his phone.

  “Charlie,” he said as his old boss answered. “Just one favour, for old time’s sake …”

  22

  Complications

  March 1984

  Julian was flicking through the “S” rack in Woolsey & Woolsey for the 12-inch remix of “Numbers” by Soft Cell, when he felt someone come up behind him.

  “Interesting,” she spoke softly, “that you like them so much.”

  Julian turned around, blinked, taking a second to recognise the person standing there. Samantha Lamb had changed her appearance yet again; now she had Corrine’s hairstyle, the one she had been staring at so hard after school the other day. Only, Julian saw, she’d had to go that little bit further in her attempts to stand out.

  “If you ask me,” Samantha went on, tapping a fingernail on Marc Almond’s face, “he’s a poof.” Her mouth twitched upwards into a smile that didn’t meet her eyes.

  “But no one did ask you, did they?” said Julian, smiling back at her.

  Her expression didn’t waver. “Are you a poof, Julian?” she asked. “Only you do look like one. And I’ve never seen you out with a girl. But maybe,” she twirled a strand of her newly dyed hair around her finger, “they just don’t like you.”

  Julian stepped backwards, frowning. “What is wrong with you?” he asked.

  Samantha chuckled. “What’s wrong with you, more like.” She winked and turned away, sweeping out of the shop.

  * * *

  Amanda jumped to her feet as she heard the front door go. She’d been waiting for her daughter to return for ho
urs, minutes stretched as finely as her nerves – especially since her doctor had told her she must give up smoking when he’d given her the news that she had been meaning to broach with Sam for the past week. Four cigarette butts she had guiltily thrown in the dustbin, one for each hour. The place reeked of air freshener, the synthetic notes of pine not quite concealing the JPS fumes that loitered beneath.

  Wayne said he would back her up, that they should present a united front and tell Sam together. But Amanda could foresee the likely outcome of that. Trying to consider her daughter’s feelings, she had given Sam the money for a haircut as a treat, an attempt to soften her up that she knew would only be condemned as another act of “falseness” and bribery. There was simply not going to be any easy way of doing this.

  “Hello, Sam,” she said, and stopped in her tracks. The top of Samantha’s hair stuck up like a bog brush, but the sides were shaved to the skin.

  “What on earth have you done?” Amanda gasped.

  “Like it?” Samantha’s eyes flashed and she did a little pirouette.

  “No, I don’t,” Amanda replied. “Are you deliberately trying to get expelled from school?”

  “Oh,” Samantha’s mouth dropped open in an expression of mock-innocence, “now why on earth would I want to do a thing like that?”

  Amanda’s jaw clenched with the effort of self-control. “I need to talk to you, Sam,” she managed to say. “Come in the front room a minute.”

  Samantha stuck her nose up in the air. “Sorry,” she said, “but I’m meeting Alex and I’m late. I only came back to pick something up. You can tell me later, it can’t be that important.” She made to move past her mother.

  “No,” Amanda caught hold of Samantha’s arm. “It’s very important that we talk now.”

  Samantha’s face turned bright red and she pushed her away with such force that she sent Amanda reeling backwards. “I’ve already told you,” she hissed. “I’m late for Alex, I don’t have time for this.”

  Amanda put her hand out to catch hold of the doorframe, trying to regain her balance from the sudden seasick lurch the push had given her. “Samantha!” she yelled. “You come in here now, or …”