It Never Goes Away

by Tom Trott

  They had granted him use of an empty classroom until they were ready to receive him. He was sitting at the teacher’s desk, working on his iPad with its little fold-out keyboard, when one of the sexiest women ever to catch his eye caught it through the window in the door. She was talking to someone in the corridor, wearing leather trousers and a leather jacket. There was something about her stance that told him she was incredibly fit, and those tight trousers displayed the contours of her powerful legs. Others might not have noticed her so instantly and instinctively, she wasn’t flashing flesh and her face wasn’t plastered in that season’s makeup formation; she hadn’t stolen tips from reality television and sports news channels to code her appearance in the “hot girl” style. She hadn’t dressed for men, she’d dressed for herself. She was what people would incorrectly term “naturally” beautiful, with what was known as a “stealth bod”. Ben believed that all the clothes in the world can’t hide a good body.

  He had always had an eye for the ladies, and in return he prided himself that he was not an unattractive man. The many duties that a councillor performs brought him into contact with a lot of different prospects, and when you meet twenty women a day it’s easy to find a bumping partner. He was forty now, but his slightly powerful position did him favours. He dressed smartly, and he always got attention; he had already got shy smiles out of several young Sixth Form students in the corridors. At least he hoped they were Sixth Form students, he had got in trouble once before. A young party activist had been all over him, flirting, laughing, smiling, she went for a drink with them, the man behind the bar clearly thought she was old enough. He had exchanged a few racy texts with her, then pictures. Then the press learnt of it. And she wasn’t eighteen, she was fifteen. He threw up when he found out, couldn’t leave the house for a week. Thank god her parents were loyal to the party, they did the right thing and made her take the blame.

  But this young woman was definitely a woman. Her powerful frame, her commanding posture, she might even be too much for him. He would relish the challenge though. She was coming his way! She made eye contact through the window and then opened the door to the classroom.

  ‘Councillor McCready?’ she asked sceptically.

  He played it cool. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh,’ she sounded surprised, ‘I was expecting some old fart, not...’ she bit her lip.

  ‘Not what?’ he asked with a grin.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said with an embarrassed smile.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

  She looked shy, smaller suddenly. He stood up, at least a head taller, but then he had always been taller than women.

  ‘I have a confession to make?’ she said, fiddling with a pencil in a nearby pot.

  ‘Oh really?’ he teased.

  She moved toward him, until they were barely a foot apart. ‘Can I trust you?’

  ‘One hundred percent.’

  ‘I’m not supposed to be here, I lied to the woman on reception.’

  ‘And why would you do that?’

  ‘I needed to speak to you.’

  ‘Lucky me.’ He grinned.

  ‘I’m desperate and you might be the only person who can help.’

  ‘I’ll do anything I can,’ he took her hands, they were shaking, and sat her down in a chair. ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s this man, he’s been calling my boyfriend, threatening him, and my boyfriend won’t do anything about it, he’s too scared, but you might be able to help.’

  He was sceptical, but he tried not to show it. ‘Certainly, I’ll speak to the Chief Superintendent and we’ll make sure the police get onto it.’

  ‘That’s the thing, my boyfriend won’t speak to the police.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he like the police? Does he have a criminal record?’

  ‘Oh, no, nothing like that.’ She giggled. ‘He’s far too wet to get involved with anything like that.’

  ‘Then why won’t he go to the police?’

  ‘He’s too scared. He’s a bit of a wimp.’

  ‘He doesn’t sound like a very good boyfriend.’

  She sighed. ‘You’re probably right.’

  Ben always thought that women up close were never as attractive as the approach promised. They were beauties from a distance but up close you could see the foundation, the pencilled eyebrows, where their lipstick ran over the edges of their thin mouths; but this woman was even more stunning up close. She looked so vital, so alive.

  ‘You didn’t tell me your name,’ he remarked.

  ‘—I don’t know who the man is!’ She was agitated now, he hadn’t been listening whilst he was judging her appearance. ‘I’ve only seen what he looks like. Can you help me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he equivocated.

  She gave a little whimper, she was getting more and more agitated, and ugly now, clinging onto his wrist and suit collar with a claw-like grip.

  ‘I followed him, I took this picture,’ she fished in her pocket for her phone and showed him a blurry photograph, heavily zoomed in, of the man walking away down a road. She was manic. He was scared. ‘Do you recognise him!?’

  ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘Look again!’

  He made a show of looking carefully, but the photo was so blurry it was impossible to identify the man. ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘This was taken just as he was going into this restaurant, here...’ she pointed to the corner of the screen, ‘where he had dinner with you.’

  ‘With me!?’ The shock jolted through him like electricity. He thought, then lied: ‘No, you’re mistaken, I don’t know this man.’

  ‘It was only a couple of days ago,’ she blubbered desperately.

  ‘No, no, I’m sorry,’ he blustered, ‘you’ll have to go.’

  He pulled her up from the chair and tried to push her toward the door. She blubbered some more.

  ‘You’ve made a mistake, I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ he screamed.

  ‘A liar to the last,’ I announced as I sauntered out of the stationary cupboard.

  The look on his face was one of pale horror. Then it fractured into anger when he recognised me. He looked round at Tidy, who was now perched on a table, tears gone, innocent smile on her face. He looked disgusted.

  ‘What do you want?’ he croaked.

  ‘Tell me who he is.’

  He looked at me through narrow eyes, confusion behind the anger.

  ‘Tell me who he is,’ I said again.

  Repeating the instruction seemed to double the confusion.

  ‘Is the question not simple enough for you?’

  ‘Not technically a question, you idiot,’ he whispered.

  Something, at least. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘You know who he is.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  His jaw was tight, his eyes bulging. ‘You know who he is, you killed Alderney.’

  A realisation washed over me, span me round like a strong wave, but you wouldn’t have known it to look at me. ‘You hired Clarence.’

  ‘Have you come here to kill me too?’

  Tidy laughed. ‘This would be a pretty stupid place to do it, angel.’

  ‘What did you hire Clarence to do?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s between me and him.’

  ‘Well right now they’re weighing his liver and inspecting his stomach contents, so you’d better tell me.’

  ‘Get out.’

  I grabbed his suit collar. ‘Listen to me you overpaid clown, I was the one that found his body, twice. Whatever you asked him to do got him killed, the odds are they want you dead too and that’s fine with me, but if you have any plans to run for re-election you’d better tell me what you know!’

  He looked over my shoulder as the door opened. ‘Oh!’ a woman squeaked.

  ‘Get out!’ I barked.

  The door slammed and I heard footsteps running down the corridor.

  It was quite a performance. I let him go and he pushed himself as far away from me as he
could get. ‘I’m not going to let you fuck this up,’ he spat.

  ‘Tell me everything or I’ll tell the police you hired Clarence. Better yet, I’ll tell the papers.’

  He looked horrified. It shouldn’t have scared him that much.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘And why do you look so terrified?’

  I felt a tickle in my eyebrow and a warm trickle down my forehead, the exertion of grabbing him had reopened my split scalp. I used a nearby piece of paper to mop up the blood and stem the flow. I must have looked ridiculous.

  ‘Try being honest with me,’ I sighed, ‘and I’ll try being honest with you. I didn’t kill Clarence.’

  He flattened his suit and straightened his tie clip, regaining his composure with the re-taming of his appearance. ‘Alderney had loads of clients, his murder probably had nothing to do with my case. And that poor woman you just scared away was here to lead me onstage.’

  ‘They’ll wait. Sure, Clarence had plenty of clients, the police have interviewed all of them, and the paper has reported on them, but since I haven’t seen your name in print for at least a couple of weeks that means they don’t know about you, which means he kept you anonymous, which might mean he thought it was important.’

  ‘I paid him extra to keep me off his books.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Five thousand. You called me overpaid, you’re the one who wears Armani. You know councillors only get an allowance, this is a second job. Five thousand is half my annual allowance!’

  ‘You’re still overpaid,’ I told him. ‘What did you hire him to do?’

  ‘I just wanted him to look into something.’

  ‘What?’

  He paused, stared at me, but at last he gave in: ‘Tessafrak.’

  It didn’t mean anything to me. ‘What is Tessafrak?’

  ‘Fracking. Shale gas. They’re the company that wants to set up a rig on the Downs. It’s dangerous, it’s bad for the environment, not to mention that’s an area of outstanding natural beauty. All I wanted him to do was look into them and find out if anything shady was going on, these companies aren’t above using devious or even criminal means to get a contract that will net them millions. And whatever you think of me, Grabarz, I do have the city’s best interests at heart.’

  ‘Who was the guy in the restaurant?’

  ‘No one. He’s just a lobbyist, they send him round to wine and dine people like me, arrange donations to our campaigns, invest in our private businesses, or promise some directorship or board seat, anything to get through what they want through, or get killed what they want killed.’

  ‘And he works for Tessafrak?’

  ‘No, he’ll work for a firm of lobbyists. I’ve met him before, he lobbied me to approve the new houses on the Downs. Tessafrak probably hired him on the back of that.

  ‘What made you suspicious of them? Suspicious enough to spend five thousand of your own money.’

  ‘I’ve read enough and heard enough about them to know they’re bad news, they have sites up and down the country. There are stories of polluted water supplies, methane coming out of household taps, seismic activity, radioactivity.’

  ‘Surely that’s exaggerated.’

  ‘They drill down into porous shale rock, then they pump in a high-pressure mixture of water and chemicals to fracture it and release gas, half the water mixture just seeps into the earth and is never recovered, and it’s not difficult for it to find its way from there into the water supply. And there are other gases, not just methane, in the shale; there can be radon and mercury. Think of all the farms on the Downs, no one has done studies on what it might do to the soil, and the crops, and the grass livestock graze on. And that’s ignoring the big ugly rig!’

  He smiled at the ridiculousness of it all. The smile left his face when he remembered he didn’t like me.

  ‘Can’t the government overrule the council?’ I asked rhetorically. ‘They might get to frack the Downs anyway and you’ll have thrown your money away.’

  ‘I don’t just want to stop them fracking the Downs, I want to put them out of business. And using Alderney’s evidence, I will.’

  At that moment the door to the classroom flew open, and two men and three women, including the one I scared earlier, marched in feeling safe in numbers.

  The most officious-looking of them spoke and acted as though he couldn’t see us. ‘It’s time, Mr McCready.’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, and moved to leave with them.

  I grabbed his arm. ‘What did he find?’

  The five others stood there awkwardly, acting tough but not wanting to intervene. One of them spotted the blood-smeared piece of paper I had left on the desk.

  McCready pulled himself from my grip and flashed his campaign smile. ‘You can find out like everyone else: on the news. Watch this space.’

  They all left the room and we followed them out, hanging back aimlessly in the corridor.

  McCready spoke as they marched away. ‘Headteacher, you might want to throw Mr Grabarz and his friend off your property. Pity I can’t watch.’

  13

  Playing House

  I had to go to A&E to get my head stitched up. They shaved a little patch of hair to do it, then stuck a cotton pad there to protect it until the skin knitted together. It looked bad, but it didn’t hurt that much, just if I scowled too hard. Tidy came with me, everyone thought we were a couple. That gave us our next idea.

  We crossed over the bypass at the same point we had in the night and turned right again, but instead of turning off down the single-lane track we kept driving parallel to the bypass for less than two hundred metres and arrived at an entrance arch fit for a brand new suburb or gated community. A large banner, visible from the bypass read “STEVENSON HOMES, NEW DEVELOPMENT AVAILABLE SOON”.

  The development was going to contain twenty properties when full; sixteen three-bedroom houses, and four two-bedrooms as a feint at affordability. But when we arrived only eight were taller than one storey, and four of those didn’t have windows. The other twelve were half-built, teams of men working on each, pouring concrete and laying bricks. A wooden sign by the entrance said, “Welcome to Downseat Village”. They had ambitions.

  I pulled the rented Kia into what would be a designated space for house number 1. As we climbed out, me now wearing a smart suit and Tidy leathered up as usual, I noticed a wiry sixty-something man standing on the front lawn looking up approvingly at the house and then down at us with a smile. He wore a grey suit with a white shirt, both slightly too large for his frame and slightly unfashionable. He had a grey moustache, black spectacles, and grey hair, and was the only man I had ever seen wearing a hat with a suit. The hat was grey too. He wore a gold watch, and in his right hand was a gold pen and a clipboard. He was rocking back and forth on his heels and seemed absolutely thrilled about something.

  ‘Hullo!’ he called to us.

  ‘Hello,’ we both replied as we wandered over to him.

  He was staring up at the second floor, we couldn’t help but follow his gaze.

  ‘Marvellous things, those windows.’ He didn’t feel any need to explain what was marvellous about them, apparently it was obvious. They looked normal to me.

  He broke away from his admiration to smile at us. ‘Come to take a sneak look at our properties, have you? I don’t blame you. Aren’t they marvellous?’

  I was too unsettled by his enthusiasm to answer, but Tidy rescued the situation with a simple ‘they’re lovely.’

  In reality they looked strangely old-fashioned. Not in a charming Regency or Victorian way, but in a weird 1950s or 1970s way, as though Westdene had been pressure-washed. One year from now you would never guess they were just that old.

  ‘That brick is Sussex brick,’ he explained. ‘Doors, windows, garden ornaments, all from Sussex providers; even the gnomes, my wife makes them herself, her little hobby.’

  I looked round, and there by the end of the path two eyes poked out of a bush beneath a
red hat. The gnome was in the traditional sort of clothes, but instead of a fishing rod or a wheelbarrow he was clutching a human sized trowel as though dragging it into the bush, his cheeks blown out with the effort.

  ‘I’m sorry, I should introduce myself.’ The man held out a hand for Tidy to shake, ‘Robert Stevenson.’

  ‘Jill.’

  ‘Lovely to meet you, Jill,’ he said before he shook mine.

  ‘Jack,’ I replied instinctively.

  ‘Great to meet you, Jack. Why don’t you come inside and I’ll show you around.’

  ‘That would be great,’ Tidy told him, putting her arm through mine.

  We followed him across perfectly trimmed and perfectly green grass to the dark blue wooden front door with stained glass window.

  ‘The door is made by local tradesmen from West Sussex oak,’ he remarked as we approached, ‘the window by a Brighton artist. I chose the colour.’ He gave us a warm smile, which I did my best to return.

  He dredged a large ring of at least thirty keys from his pocket and cycled through them one by one. I looked down at the small bush by the front step. In front of it stood another gnome, his hands behind his back, his cheeks red above his white beard, and a mischievous smile on his face. He might have frozen the second I looked at him. I peered over the top of his red hat and saw that in his hidden hands were a set of human-sized house keys made in porcelain.

  Stevenson had the door open now, and was inside wiping his feet on the doormat. We followed him in.

  The hallway was carpeted in a shade somewhere between pink and red, the walls something muted and inoffensive. The wooden bannisters were painted white, the carpet extended up the stairs, and the cordless telephone was plugged in by the door. It was like stepping into your aunt’s house. Everything had a featureless, tasteless quality to it. Not distasteful, just tasteless, like the house of someone who kept it in perfect condition but hadn’t redecorated in twenty years. Like a Bournemouth B&B. And this wasn’t a knocked-through open-plan modern layout, this floor had two rooms: living room and kitchen.