Weirdo

by Cathi Unsworth

  He had accepted that his lot was not a bad one, until Sean Ward rolled into town.

  Smollet opened the cupboard door, banishing his ruffled image. He’d already packed her normal medication, but the doctor had given him an emergency supply of something stronger, in case she ever became violent. He’d seen some flares of temper over the years, but nothing that had ever made him think it would be necessary to use it.

  But, as he picked up the packet of Rohypnol, he felt unknown territory opening up before him. Sean Ward had deduced correctly that from the moment he had first contacted Rivett, things had reverted to exactly as they were before he retired: Rivett giving the orders, telling Smollet to be as gracious as possible to the PI while letting Uncle Len take care of the real business his way. Suggesting that he might like to take Samantha out of town for a while, that if she caught wind of anything about Ward’s enquiry, it might rekindle unwanted memories of a very unpleasant time for all concerned.

  As usual, Smollet had deferred to Rivett’s wisdom, making arrangements to take Samantha to a trusted retreat after work this evening where he could leave her in safety to be properly looked after, while biting back the nagging doubts that popped into his mind with every fresh turn of events. All the strangeness up at the old pillbox had brought back a lot of memories Smollet thought he had buried years ago. Of the days when he was at school with Darren Moorcock and Corrine Woodrow, of that brief time when Samantha had been one of them weirdos herself.

  But, until Blackburn’s call, Smollet had assured himself that there could be no repercussions from the twenty-year-old case, that, as usual, his uncle had everything in hand. Perhaps, he admitted to himself, as his eyes ran down the label on the bottle, he hadn’t wanted to think anything else was possible.

  He had rung Rivett to ask him if he knew anything about what DS Kidd had been doing up at Alcott’s farm. Rivett had denied any knowledge of it and, for the first time, Smollet realised he was lying. He knew how far back Kidd went with Rivett, knew the part he had played in the original Woodrow investigation. These last two nights, Smollet had sat up late, reading the old case files himself, along with the reams of Ward’s notes, trying to see between the lines of history, to divine if there was anything that had been hidden from view back then that Rivett had not revealed to him since.

  But before he was able to articulate any of this, Rivett had told him that they needed to meet before he left, up in what they both still referred to as Eric’s office.

  “Why?” Smollet had been dumbfounded. “I thought we sorted all the business stuff up there last night? You know, so’s I could get off early? Which was your idea anyway …”

  “Dale,” Rivett’s voice took on the jocular tone he liked to use just before interrogating a suspect, “you know I’m taking special care of your interests, like I always have. But something’s been brought to my attention that could be a problem for you if we don’t sort it out now. There’s been a journalist sniffing around. She might have stumbled on something that could harm you. I can’t go into it on the phone, I shouldn’t have to explain why. But you want everything to keep being all right for you and Samantha, don’t you?”

  “For me and Samantha?” Smollet still didn’t quite compute what he was hearing.

  “That’s right,” said Rivett, “your lovely wife. That’s her I’m thinking about and you should too. I’ll see you in half an hour, Dale. Give me a ring when you’re on your way.”

  Then the phone had clicked off. Smollet left the station in a daze, ordering Blackburn to deal with the mess his best friend had made for the DCC of Norwich, while he drove home way above the speed limit, unable to dampen the fuse of fear that last comment from Rivett had lit in his head. In all his thirty-six years, Smollet might never have managed to decode how his uncle’s mind worked, but he could read enough of the signs to know when the old man was setting something – or someone – up. He came home to find Samantha in the deepest torpor he had seen in months. And now she was telling him Rivett had already paid a visit here this morning …

  When Smollet came back into the bedroom, his wife was still sitting in her silk nightie and dressing gown. But she was holding something he had never seen before. A big, old, black, leather-bound book.

  “Look,” she said, “what Uncle Len gave me. He said he was returning it, like I’d lent it to him or something. But Dale,” her eyes were fearful. “I don’t like it. It reminds me of something … Something bad …”

  * * *

  Gray put the phone down. “I’m meeting him now,” he told Sandra. “At DCI Smollet’s house.”

  “Do you think—?” Sandra began, but her husband cut her off with a kiss, pressing the logbook into her hand.

  “Take good care of it, love,” he said. “I’ve got to go.”

  * * *

  Rivett picked up the receiver. The voice on the other end was not one he had been expecting and for a second he struggled to comprehend what he was hearing. Something about Kidd knowing he’d be at this number. Something about the selfsame Kidd getting arrested for B&E at Alcott’s farm, the old biddy holding him up with a twelve-bore while her husband rang Norwich police. It was Blackburn doing the blabbering and, as this registered, Rivett thought he must be playing some kind of spectacularly unfunny practical joke, of a type he excelled at.

  “And if that weren’t bad enough,” Blackburn went on, “DC Snell went down Pearson’s place, to take care of him like you told me, and he’s now in casualty with half his arse ripped off. You never said the old boy had dogs.”

  “Dogs?” repeated Rivett, and as he said the word, he thought he could hear the sound of barking. He got to his feet, putting the gun back down on the desk. “You’re fucking me about, in’t you?” he said, loosening his collar, looking straight through Francesca, his face flushing a vivid red. “Tell me you’re fucking me about.”

  “I wish I was, sir,” Blackburn’s voice was a pathetic whine. “But that DCC from Norwich left here ten minutes ago and I reckon he’s headed your way.”

  “What?” Rivett’s face turned from crimson to chalk white. “And where’s Smollet been through all this?”

  “I don’t know,” Blackburn said. “He run out of here ’bout half an hour ago, screaming his head off that I shouldn’t talk to you about it, then left me to deal with all this shit …”

  Rivett dropped the phone. The sounds in his ears were getting steadily louder, a pack of hounds he could hear now, yammering and howling, baying for blood. Pain shot up from his legs and into his chest, down from his arms and towards his heart, so strong he felt it throwing him upwards, throwing him backwards, Eric’s old chair tipping over beneath him. Then he was falling, falling, towards the dark water, images racing through his mind.

  Eric’s granddaughter, her hair fanned out around her on the pillow, telling him she had seen a murder, the boy who had been reported missing that morning. The words dropping out of her with an actress’s precision, a story so complete no innocent could have possibly made it up. Eric holding her hand and telling her that she was a good girl, she looking up at him expectantly. Him looking down at the girl’s hand in Eric’s, at her broken nails, her skinned knuckles.

  Edna in the kitchen, kneading dough.

  Paul Gray nodding as he looked at the picture of the boy. Paul Gray going to work. Alf Brown going to work afterwards, moving slowly through the foul air of the pillbox, stoic and unmoved, a good soldier who never questioned orders.

  Corrine Woodrow crying in the cells. Corrine Woodrow with no cuts and grazes on her knuckles, her black-painted nails unbroken. Darren Moorcock’s dried blood smeared all over her face.

  Fires in the night in the South Town terraces, cries of vengeance on the lips of the people, smoke billowing into the night air. Riots at the gates of Ernemouth High, a tall, thin man being ushered away under a blanket into the back of a police van, while a mob of mothers screamed for his blood.

  The weight of Edna’s coffin on his shoulder, the sombre di
rge of the church organ as they processed up the aisle.

  Eric, lying on a hospital bed, wired up to all them machines. Leaning in close to give him the last rites, whispering the words of benediction: “A marriage between our families, Eric, that’s what we said. Now that’s all set in stone …” – fanning his best friend’s brow with the solicitor’s documents, with Eric’s Last Will and Testament – “your part is done.” Fingers closing around the oxygen tube, pinching it shut, seeing the realisation bloom in Eric’s eyes just before they clouded over.

  And Gina, Gina running towards the river in Norwich, down a narrow alleyway, GET INTO ARCHEOLOGY – GIVE

  SNOWY ONE daubed across the wall in white paint. Gina stumbling and falling, her red lips framing curses, her black eyes flashing up at him, stone cold with hate to the last.

  Fading into Corrine, waiting by his car, dancing with herself.

  Rivett felt an iron fist clench around his heart, felt the hounds’ hot breath on his cheek as his head hit the floor.

  * * *

  “Here,” Smollet offered the glass across to his wife. “Drink this. It’ll make you feel better.”

  But she shook her head.

  “Don’t want to,” she said, sounding like a child. Or a petulant teenager.

  “Please, darling,” Smollet pleaded, looking sideways at the clock again, thinking how much longer they had got, feeling as if everything was slipping away from him, wondering why he had never comprehended before what Rivett and Eric Hoyle were really capable of.

  He put the glass down on the bedside table, reached to take the book out of her hands.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It belongs to a master magician,” she whispered, and her eyes rolled away.

  Smollet could take no more. If he couldn’t get the drugs down her throat, he would have to use another method. With a deft flick of his palm, she slumped forwards across the bed, the book falling from her arms and sliding onto the floor.

  * * *

  The rain started suddenly as they passed the Britannic Pier, sheeting down hard on the windscreen. Noj looked up in time to see a fork of lightning cracking across the horizon, a jagged line in the sky momentarily illuminating the turbines that towered above the North Denes. She felt a quickening in her blood, a sense of time coming full circle.

  “Here,” she said, pointing across the windscreen towards a ’60s-built faux Scandinavian villa looking out to sea.

  Lights were blazing at every window and Sean could see the same car Smollet had left the station in still standing in the driveway. As he pulled in, the front door opened and Smollet stepped out, carrying a woman in his arms.

  Smollet’s head snapped around as Sean braked, blocking off the exit to the drive. The DCI’s face registered surprise as Sean opened the car door and got out, an expression momentarily lit against the slanting rain by a second set of headlights, Gray’s car pulling up behind Sean’s. The woman in his arms didn’t move.

  “DCI Smollet,” Sean moved swiftly across the driveway. “I need to finish my interview with you now.”

  “What’s all this?” Smollet tried to bluff it out. Saw the retired DS Gray coming up behind Sean. “Get out of my way, can’t you see my wife’s ill?” he said. “I’ve got to get her to hospital.”

  Sean moved in closer to study the woman. Her eyes were closed, her face tranquil. She didn’t look ill, just sleeping.

  “That’s her, in’t it?” said Paul Gray from behind him. “That’s who you’ve been protecting, all this time.”

  Smollet’s jaw slackened. “What?” he said.

  “Who is she?” asked Sean, no longer sure what was going on.

  “She used to be called Samantha Lamb,” said Gray. “Her granddad owned this house, the Leisure Beach and half of the rest of Ernemouth. Died a widower in ’89, estranged from his daughter, left half his fortune to his best mate – Len Rivett.”

  Francesca’s face flashed into Sean’s mind. “Leisure Beach Industries Inc of Ernemouth, you mean?” he asked. “The other half owned by DCI Smollet, here?”

  “Sound about right,” said Gray. “And if I in’t completely lost my marbles,” he nodded towards the sleeping woman, “she’ll be the one with your missing DNA.”

  “No,” said Smollet, taking a step backwards. “No, get away from us.”

  “The missing DNA,” said Sean. “Rivett already provided me with the match.” He looked Smollet dead in the eye. “From a sample he took this morning.”

  The DCI looked down at his wife and then up again at Sean, an expression of horror on his face. “No,” he said, “he can’t have done. He couldn’t have …”

  “He did,” said Sean. “I’m looking forward to hearing his explanation for it almost as much as hearing how come his own DNA is so similar to Corrine Woodrow’s.”

  “My godfathers,” he heard Gray say. “Gina.”

  Sean glanced around, wondering if any of the cars parked on the road belonged to Francesca. “Where is he, anyhow?” he said. “Where’s Rivett?”

  But Smollet had started to sway. Gray stepped forwards, catching hold of him. “Steady,” he said. “I think you need a brandy.”

  He looked down at the slender woman lying compliant in Smollet’s arms, a raindrop sliding off her eyelashes. Wondered how it was that she could look so peaceful.

  “Let’s go inside,” he said, propelling the pair of them back through the front door.

  Sean looked round. No one had answered his question about Rivett, but he clearly wasn’t here. He glanced back at his car. Noj wasn’t there either, her door was wide open.

  “I’ll catch up with you in one second,” he said to Gray, his hand closing over the swab kit full of Noj’s DNA, still nestling safe in his pocket.

  On the passenger seat of his car he found another little effigy, like the one he’d retrieved from the pillbox. A doll-Rivett lying with his feet in the air, a pin piercing his heart.

  * * *

  Noj was running, running in the rain, the book safely in her bag, racing through the back streets, choking back sobs.

  The moment they had pulled into the driveway she had seen it in her mind’s eye, lying on the white shagpile carpet of the bedroom floor. While everyone – including Gray, the copper come back from the past – had crowded around Smollet and his sleeping beauty, she had seized her chance to slip inside the open front door, moving rapidly up the stairs, locating her target as if the book itself were guiding her along. None of them had seen her come out again, none of them had seen her go. She was as sure of that as she had been of the vision in the crystal ball that had led her to Samantha Lamb. Even so, she could hardly believe she had finally got it back again, finally retrieved it from a source more powerful than her conceited teenage self would ever have given credit for. Although Corrine always had.

  As she ran, Noj cried for Corrine, who, so anxious for knowledge, so hungry for power, she had abandoned on that crucial night to study with the master she would now finally return the book to. The master who had made her what she was today – but at what price? Had she only been there for Corrine, then none of this would ever have happened …

  But time had come full circle now and she could feel the transformation, the same as it had come to her in the graveyard on the night she had placed the curse on Samantha. The streetlights blurred into the tears that ran down her cheeks, this lesson was the hardest one to learn of all.

  When she arrived at Mr Farrer’s door, Noj put her hand up to her face. Felt a prickling of stubble, there beneath her skin.

  * * *

  Francesca knelt beside him, but Rivett didn’t see her. He was on the edge of the harbour wall, looking up at the statue of Nelson. Only, it wasn’t the Admiral there. It was Sean Ward staring down at him with his dark brown eyes, a grin upon his face.

  “Justass!” he called out. “See you on the other side!”

  Then Rivett fell backwards, let the water take him.

  40

 
Ocean Rain

  June 2004

  Janice Mathers followed Dr Radcliffe down the long grey-green corridor, their footsteps echoing through the unadorned walls and the rows of windowless doors, under fluorescent light and air heavy with antiseptic.

  After they passed through the security gate, splashes of colour started to appear along the walls, the artwork of inmates proudly displayed. The sound of voices could be discerned and shapes moved behind the frosted, reinforced glass of the classrooms. Dr Radcliffe didn’t pause until they had reached the dormitory rooms that were allowed, within certain hours, to keep their doors open. All except for one, the last door on the left.

  Here, the doctor came to a halt, and turned to face the barrister.

  His eyes had lost the flinty hostility she had grown to associate with him on her previous visits here. Now they were soft, with a slight sparkle to them, an emotion mirrored in his voice as he started to speak. “I feel I owe you an apology, Miss Mathers,” he said.

  The QC shook her head. “You always did what you thought was best for her,” she said. “Which was more kindness than most people in her life have ever shown her. You kept her safe,” she smiled sadly, “in here.”

  Dr Radcliffe nodded curtly, put the key into the lock of the door. “Her insistence,” he felt duty-bound to add, “not mine.” He turned the handle gently.

  Corrine didn’t raise her head. She was sitting on the bed, a watercolour spread out in front of her that had recently been taken down from the wall. It was a picture she had painted continuously since she’d first arrived in Dr Radcliffe’s care, a replica of the one he had shown to Sean Ward fifteen months ago, that Mathers’ defence team had in turn exhibited to the Court of Appeals. There, they had managed to convince a jury that Corrine hadn’t, as her psychiatrist had always maintained, been duplicating this image in an attempt to access the innocent child she had left behind long ago on Ernemouth beach, but as a way of trying to assuage her guilt over Darren Moorcock – for leading him into the lair where his murderer waited.