Weirdo

by Cathi Unsworth

  Rivett chuckled softly, shook his head. “No, girl, you got me all wrong,” he said. “That might not look that way to you now, but this place is a vital part of his history. You could say that this is where it all began.”

  He undid his seatbelt, opened the car door and hefted himself out. Vicious pains jabbed at his kneecaps as he rose to his feet and for a second he had to steady himself on the side of the car so as not to let his discomfort show. Bastard old body, Rivett cursed inwardly. Don’t you let me down now.

  Francesca stepped out of the car, looking back towards the security guard, who had settled down into his chair and the sports pages of a tabloid. She locked the car, put the keys in her jacket pocket, where she could get to them quickly.

  “This way,” said Rivett, putting his hand on her elbow and steering her towards the turnstiles. Francesca did her best not to wince at his touch, kept her fingers curled around the keys. Beyond the one spotlight that illuminated the car park, rose the skeletal outline of the log flume, the curves and dips of the old wooden rollercoaster and the silent spheres of the stilled big wheel and the rock-a-plane. It suddenly made perfect sense to Francesca that these two men could be joined by this place of smoke and mirrors, this land of delusion and deception, lying silent and sinister without the coins of the tourists to work its fancy lights and cheap thrills.

  At the door of the turnstile, Rivett rapidly keyed numbers into a pad and turned the handle. Stopped on the threshold and said: “I hear you done a pretty good job keeping the old Mercury afloat.”

  “Did you?” Pat’s face flashed through Francesca’s mind. “From who?”

  Rivett ignored the question. “I used to know Sid Hayles, way back when. He were a good friend of mine, as it goes. There were none of these, what d’you call them, profiles, all this social concern in his day. Now I know, times do change, as you already pointed out. But I reckon what your paper needs is a little sense of historical perspective.” He pushed the door open, made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “After you,” he said.

  * * *

  Sean put his arm around Noj’s shoulder, propelled her away from the steps of the Lodge, where he could see the man behind the desk reaching for the phone.

  “Where do you think they’re going?” he asked, heading the pair of them back to his car.

  Noj hurried round to the passenger side. “To DCI Smollet’s house,” she said, yanking the door open, sliding in and slamming it shut. “We should hurry.”

  Sean put his key back in the ignition, then paused. “You seem very sure of yourself,” he said. “Why do you think they’re going there?”

  Noj stared at him with incredulous eyes. But it seemed she was lost for an answer. Her mouth opened and closed as she bounced up and down on the seat, but no noise came out.

  “Go on,” said Sean.

  * * *

  Gray sat down on the sofa, next to his wife.

  “My old log book,” he said, “from 1984. You in’t supposed to keep them. But this is the only insurance I’ve got for you if something now happen to me.”

  Sandra felt a rush of panic, scanned her husband’s face for traces of impending breakdown. But his eyes were sharp and focused.

  He put his hand down over hers. “Sandra,” he said, “what you got to understand about Len Rivett is that he’s got this way about him, like he already knows what’s in your mind and you’re just doing yourself a favour unburdening yourself to him.” He shook his head, smiling ironically. “He’s almost like a priest.”

  “What is it, love, what did you tell him?” Sandra’s hand balled into a fist.

  Gray looked her straight in the eye. “The summer of 1973,” he said, “you might remember. There was this new bloke taking football with the cubs. Ron next door asked me about him. Bloke said he was a qualified PE teacher but Ron had a funny feeling about him, wanted to know if I could do any kind of check. So I done a bit of digging and sure enough, the bloke had been a teacher – until he got the sack and done five years for child molesting, somewhere over Coventry way.”

  Sandra closed her eyes. Gray squeezed her hand tighter.

  “Now, what I should have done,” he said, “was just told the scout leader and had him removed. But that didn’t sit right with me. He’d still be lurking about, wouldn’t he, and until I had proof he were up to his old tricks again, there weren’t much more I could do about it. Meanwhile, children were in danger. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. I nearly bloody killed him, love.”

  Sandra’s eyes opened, glittering with tears.

  “Len covered it all up for me,” said Gray. “After I told him why I done it, of course.”

  Sandra saw her husband’s knuckles whiten around the book he was clutching.

  “Got the whole lot out of me,” Gray went on. “About the home, my foster father and all. I mean, it weren’t something I’d ever admitted to anyone before, except you.” He paused. “He never mentioned it again, or even alluded to it. Until Corrine Woodrow.”

  “And then last night,” Sandra deduced.

  Gray nodded. “But this,” he slapped the cover of his log book, “has got a few facts about my side of the investigation he won’t want coming to light.”

  “But I thought you weren’t in on the official investigation?” she said.

  “I weren’t,” nodded Gray. “This is what I found out for myself.”

  * * *

  “This place,” said Rivett, opening his arms as the door to the inner sanctum shut behind them, “used to belong to a man called Eric Hoyle. A great man.”

  “Another good friend of yours?” said Francesca, trying to place where she had heard the name before. An image of her parents flashed into her mind. Huddled over the kitchen table together, talking in whispers.

  “That’s right,” said Rivett, catching hold of her elbow again and steering her towards a row of sideshows, all locked and boarded up now, but their garish hoardings still in place. “And this one,” he pointed towards the letters that proclaimed Magic Darts, “was where it all began for the young Dale Smollet. His Uncle Ted run the concession, still do, in fact, despite the fact he’s pushing seventy. They do say the carnival get in your blood, you never want to leave it, no matter how old you get. Retirement in’t an option. Don’t suppose men like Ted can afford it to be.”

  Francesca eyed the plastic depiction of a dartboard and arrows, surrounded by stars, her mind conjuring back the photograph she had shown to Sean in the newsroom, those old men with all their secrets.

  “Men like you, too, Mr Rivett,” she said. “I don’t get the feeling you ever really retired.”

  “I can see why you became a journalist,” said Rivett. “What I don’t understand, though, is why you come here in the first place. You had a good job in London, I hear, on one of them daily papers. What would a bright, and if you don’t mind me saying, attractive woman like you want to jack that in for, come and work in a sleepy old town like this?”

  “I like a challenge,” said Francesca, smiling. “Like yourself, I should imagine. Was Dale Smollet your challenge, Mr Rivett? Did you help him on his way from the funfair to detective chief inspector?”

  Rivett shifted back and forth between his toes and his heels, hoping that this would keep the circulation flowing, the pain at bay.

  “I see the potential in everyone, Miss Ryman,” he said. “That’s why I make such a good detective. In many ways, our jobs are similar, in’t they? We gather up all the knowledge of how everything work round here and then, that’s up to us to project an orderly, respectable image of the town. If we don’t, that’s bad for business. And we can’t have that, can we?”

  The smile faded from Francesca’s lips.

  * * *

  “Smollet,” Noj eventually spluttered, “and Rivett are in this together. They always have been.”

  “In what together?” said Sean. Earlier events replayed themselves in his mind. The phone call Smollet had taken in his office, his rapid, flustered
exit – it did fit into the timeframe of Francesca’s supposed interview. And if Rivett had been there to intercept her, it was perfectly possible they were rendezvousing now.

  “Setting up Corrine!” Noj wailed. “She was the scapegoat! And if you don’t get after them now, not only is your friend going to be the next one, but the person you’re really after is going to get away.”

  “The person I’m really after?” Sean looked at the strange creature beside him, whom he had known for mere hours. Thought about the matching DNA, sure in his bones that it wouldn’t belong to this biker, that Rivett was pulling some other sleight of hand with him. Making another scapegoat. But to believe that was to trust that Noj wasn’t just some vindictive fantasist looking to settle a twenty-year-old grudge, that she really could lead him to the culprit’s door. However unlikely it seemed.

  “OK,” he reached into his jacket pocket for the other clean swab kit, “just to prove we’re on the level, I want you to do one thing for me. It will take one second, then we can go.”

  * * *

  “That’s getting a bit chilly out here, in’t it?” said Rivett. “Let’s go and wait for him in the office. He said he’d call us there when he’s on his way.”

  He stopped by the door to the tower, keyed in some more numbers and opened it up. Striplights illuminated a red-carpeted lobby, a metallic wall with a lift set into it.

  “To the penthouse suite,” said Rivett, “… where all the secrets are kept.”

  36

  The Sky’s Gone Out

  June 1984

  “Corrine? Is anything the matter?”

  Lizzy’s voice filtered through Corrine’s synapses some moments after the head stylist had spoken. She turned around slowly, not wanting the book to slip out of her sight.

  “Is it all right to go outside a minute?” she said, putting her hand up over her brow. “I just come over a bit funny, like I’m gonna faint or something.”

  Lizzy frowned, following Corrine’s gaze to the figure standing outside. Samantha shifted, turned away, as if she knew she was being observed, but not before Lizzy recognised her as the girl who she had styled to look like Corrine earlier in the spring. Something strange had been going on between those two then – and if she wasn’t mistaken, still was.

  Lizzy was very fond of Corrine, but she didn’t like being lied to. “Two minutes,” she said. “And make sure your friend is gone by then.”

  Corrine went bright red, almost falling over her broom to get out of the room fast enough. Outside, on the other side of the road, Samantha started to walk away.

  “Sam, stop!” Corrine yelled, loud enough for everyone in the salon to hear her, launching herself across the road.

  Samantha wheeled round, her eyes dancing with malice as she held out the book.

  “Give that back, Sam,” said Corrine, tears of frustration welling up in her eyes. “You in’t got no right to it, that in’t even mine.”

  Samantha ducked away from her, turning in a circle around her. “Why?” she said. “What’s so special about it?”

  “It’s rare, that’s why,” Corrine made an unsuccessful lunge. “There’s only a few of them in the whole world.”

  Samantha skipped out of Corrine’s reach. “It doesn’t look much to me,” she said. “Bet you can’t even understand it.”

  “I do all right,” Corrine balled her hands up into fists. “That belong to a master magician and if he find out you’ve got it, that’ll be the worse for you.”

  “A master magician?” Samantha burst out laughing. “That’s a good one, Corrine.”

  Corrine’s punch fell through thin air. “Give it back, I said!” she wailed.

  “I might do,” said Samantha. “But only if you help me first.” She looked over Corrine’s shoulder to where Lizzy was coming through the salon door.

  “Corrine!” the head stylist yelled. “That’s enough. Get back in here now!”

  “Just a minute,” Corrine yelled back. She didn’t take her eyes off Sam. “What d’you mean, help you?” she said.

  “I said now!” Lizzy started walking across the road towards them.

  “That old pillbox where you had the party,” said Sam. “The one that the police found out about. Yes, I saw you, Corrine,” she smiled at the gobsmacked expression this revelation provoked. “I don’t need a crystal ball to keep my eye on you, sister. Meet me there when you’ve finished here tonight. Then I might give it back to you.”

  Lizzy’s hand came down on Corrine’s shoulder, but she was looking at Samantha. The girl looked shocking, like she’d been sleeping rough.

  “Get out of here,” Lizzy snapped, “and stop bothering my staff.”

  “But Lizzy, she …”

  “And you,” she propelled Corrine back towards the salon. “Get back to work right now and keep your mouth shut for the rest of the day. Otherwise we might have to rethink your employment here.”

  The words stung Corrine harder than a slap around the face.

  * * *

  At six-thirty, after Corrine had swept up the last tendril of hair and cleaned the last coffee cup in complete silence, Lizzy’s head came around the kitchen door.

  “Corrine,” she said, in gentler tones than she’d used earlier, “what was all that about?”

  Corrine gave her a hard stare. Up until today, she had idolised Lizzy. But the way she had spoken to her, in front of Sam of all people, had made her wonder if the stylist just wasn’t like all the rest of the adults that had let her down over the years.

  Lizzy, in her turn, was shocked by the hostility of Corrine’s glare. “Corrine,” she tried again. “Don’t you understand that I can’t have you fighting right outside the salon window?”

  “Samantha Lamb nicked that book out of my bag yesterday,” she said. “I was tryin’ to get it back off her. An’ you stopped me.”

  “Well, if you had told me that—” Lizzy began.

  “You wouldn’t have cared,” Corrine cut her off abruptly. “Like everyone else. You’re only nice to me when you want something.” She pulled her overall over her head and hung it up on a peg, picking up her bag and slinging it over her shoulder.

  “Corrine,” Lizzy tried again, feeling like she was floundering in deep water.

  “Can I go now?” the girl’s dark eyes bored into her mentor.

  Lizzy took a step backwards. “Can’t I try and help you?” she offered.

  “Don’t bother,” said Corrine. “I’ll sort it out myself, like always.” With that she pushed past her boss and left the salon for the last time.

  * * *

  “How many times do I have to tell you,” Noj’s mother’s voice crackled in Corrine’s ear, “he in’t here and I don’t know where he is. Or when he’ll be back.”

  Corrine heard a man’s voice in the background. Noj’s dad, she thought, back off the rigs. No wonder he in’t around. Mr Kenyon took the receiver from his wife.

  “If you see the little poof, you can keep him,” he said and put the phone down.

  Corrine stepped out of the callbox. Without Noj, she simply didn’t know what to do.

  She looked up at the clock at the top of the market square. Quarter to seven, it said. Hunger pains stabbed at her stomach, and she found herself walking in the direction of the fish and chips stall. She didn’t have a clue what she was going to say or do when she saw Sam. But, she told herself, she didn’t have to do any of it on an empty stomach.

  She was just pouring vinegar into her cone, when she heard a voice beside her. “All right, Corrine?”

  “Darren!” she spun round, a spark of hope igniting at the sound of his voice.

  “Just finished work?” he asked, taking a cone of chips for himself.

  “Yeah,” said Corrine. “What you now up to?”

  “Not a lot,” he said, taking the vinegar from her. “Debbie’s still in bed.”

  “Debbie!” Corrine’s mouth fell open. She had all but forgotten her friend’s plight.

  “
Don’t worry,” said Darren, “she’s all right. Just in’t really in any state to come out at the moment. I now brought her the music papers, to cheer her up.”

  “Oh,” said Corrine, passing him the salt. “That’s all right then. So,” she said, popping the first chip into her mouth, “you in’t meeting up with Jules then?”

  “Nah,” said Darren. “He’s gone up Norwich with Alex.” He raised his eyebrows, put the salt back down on the counter. “Early night for me, I reckon.”

  “Darren, d’you reckon you could help me out?” Though chewing with her mouth open, Corrine’s expression was solemn. “Fuckin’ Sam Lamb’s dropped me right in the shit again.”

  * * *

  As they headed towards the seafront, Corrine did her best to explain. “I reckon she’s lost me my job,” she concluded.

  “Nah.” Darren shook his head. “She like you, don’t she, your boss? She wouldn’t let you go over one mistake like that.”

  “She really shouted at me,” Corrine protested. “In front of everyone.”

  “Well, that most probably din’t look all that good from her point of view, did it?” said Darren. “Not if all her customers could see you having a barney. She din’t know what was really going on, did she?”

  A sudden stroke of guilt clawed at Corrine as she recalled her last exchange with Lizzy. “No,” she said, “’S’pose not. Shit, Darren, I really lost my temper. I shouldn’t have done it, should I?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Darren. “That’ll all look different in the morning. You say sorry and I bet she will too.”

  “Fuckin’ Sammy Lamb,” Corrine crumpled her empty chip cone, wishing it was Samantha’s neck instead. “Why can’t she just leave me alone?”

  Darren shrugged. “I wish I knew what her problem is,” he said. “But look, Reenie, you don’t have to say nothing to her. You just wait outside and let me get the book back for you. She won’t be expecting that, will she?”

  “Oh, thanks, Darren,” Corrine put her arm through his as they came out onto Marine Parade and turned left towards the North Denes. “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “You don’t have to,” said Darren. He smiled, nodding to himself. “That’ll be good to get one back on the silly cow, all the hassle she put Debs through.”