Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time

by M. P. Wright

  He laughed as he hooked the battered old coat over my shoulders, drawing me towards him in a protective hug.

  “Come on, let’s git you back to your aunt Pearl, git some of her chicken and rice and peas inside your belly. I got Carnell Harris round the corner in that flash jalopy he’s gone and lent you, he’ll git us home real quick. That man, he ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he cares ’bout you and he’s been worrying his guts since he found out you’d been lifted yesterday. Friends like that are hard to come by, Joseph, real hard to come by.”

  We walked together in the heavy, impure mist. The profound gratitude I felt inside at that moment for those who so clearly cared for me was truly indescribable.

  32

  Exhausted and cold, I sat on the back seat of the Cortina trying to stay awake. The only thing that kept me from nodding off on the short journey back to my aunt Pearl and uncle Gabe’s place was Carnell’s bad driving. In less than two miles he’d managed to find every pothole in the road so that each time I closed my eyes and surrendered to my desperate need to sleep, my weary head would either crack against the window or be thrown back and forth as we hit another rut in the tarmac.

  “Damn it, Carnell, you ain’t motoring down no dirt-track road. Who the hell taught you to drive a car, boy, your blind grandmama?” Gabe snapped at our hapless but well-meaning chauffeur, who was by now gripping at the steering wheel of the Ford for dear life. His body was rooted to the edge of his seat as he nervously peered forward through the windscreen out into the dense murkiness of the smog. Carnell glanced across at Gabe in the passenger seat, my uncle’s face raw with irritability.

  “Sorry, Gabe . . . You know how I hate having to drive in this shitty weather. Gits me all worked up, and this fog’s sure making it hard to git a handle of where I’m headin’.”

  “Just keep your stupid, squinty eyes on the damn road befo’ you run this heap into the side of a wall and git the t’ree of us killed, you fool!”

  Gabe frantically rubbed at his balding scalp and shook his head slowly, mouthing further insulting obscenities to Carnell before swinging around to brusquely speak to me.

  “You been kicking up a shit storm from the look o’ tings. Vic says to tell you that he’s got Leroy Granger, the joiner on Gatton Road, to go see to those busted doors back at your place; he’s putting you a couple o’ new locks on and all. Your aunt Pearl, she’s already been round to your place with Loretta and cleaned up what the police t’rew about while they was pulling your digs to bits. You really gone and upset somebody with your busybodying, boy. Time you thought ’bout a different kinda work, Joseph.”

  It was the second time in less than twenty-four hours I’d been told that my prying was making me enemies. It was sounding like old news to me and I switched off from any further exchange with my elderly relation by not making further eye contact with him, instead looking out of the side window into the mist-filled street as we drove back into St Pauls.

  Gabe turned back to face Carnell and disapprovingly shook his head at him again before removing his ill-tempered gaze from my good friend and staring down at his feet in the foot well of the car, the awkward silence a cruel companion until we pulled up outside my relatives’ house on Banner Road.

  The first thing that hit me when I walked through the front door and into the hall of my aging kin’s home was the delicious smell of the pepperpot beef stew that was cooking on the range in the kitchen. I took off the old duffle coat and hooked the hood over the wooden ball of the banister post at the foot of the stairs and followed the warming aromas through to the scullery. Aunt Pearl was standing in the centre of the room, topping up an ancient tin bathtub, carefully pouring scalding-hot water from a brass kettle that she had already half-filled. A pile of fresh, clean towels sat on top of a kitchen dining chair next to it with an amber bar of Wright’s coal tar soap sitting squarely in the centre of the fluffy bath sheets. She looked up at me and smiled before decanting the remainder of the boiling liquid into the bath, then turned to the sink to refill the kettle and sat it back onto the waiting blazing gas flame on the hob of the stove.

  “I thought you’d be needing to git yo’self scrubbed up after spending a night in that pokey the police been holding you in. Joseph, take those filthy rags of yo’ back and I’ll see they git washed. I brought you back some of your tings to wear. I ironed ’em up and they hanging on the back o’ that door fo’ you.”

  She pointed past me to where my freshly pressed clothes were hung with her long, time-worn finger before setting her knowing eyes on her husband and Carnell, who stood close by at the entrance to the cramped kitchen door.

  “That pepperpot cook-up sure does smell fine, Mrs Pearl!” Carnell piped up hungrily from behind me.

  “Oh, I know it does. You ain’t never gonna change, are you, boy? Food and cards only tings that stupid head o’ yours has ever been interested in. I don’t know why Loretta puts up with your gluttonous and gambling ways; she must be witless! Yo’ know, I could hear those guts o’ yours rumbling after that chow I got bubbling away on that oven no soon as yo’ came strolling t’ru my front gate door.”

  She laughed to herself as she lifted the kettle off the hob again and tipped it into the bathtub, then came over to me and gently kissed me on the forehead before leaving the room and turning her attention again to the audience at her kitchen door.

  “Now you two let this man git himself cleaned up; then we can all sit and eat.”

  “Lord have mercy!” I heard Carnell call out with ravenous joy, and he clapped his hands together as he and my uncle Gabe followed Pearl back down the hallway towards the sitting room. “Hey, Gabe, you wouldn’t happen to have a bottle o’ stout hanging round that we could open up, celebrate old JT’s return to the fold?”

  The three of them broke out laughing as I closed the door behind me and began to undress, the warmth of their continuing laughter from the other room a welcome respite from the twenty-four hours of misery that I’d just endured.

  I didn’t mess around getting myself clean. After I’d scrubbed off the stink of the police cell from my skin, I quickly dressed and called Carnell to come and give me a hand to lift the heavy tin bath filled with my grimy water and suds. He joined me in the kitchen, took a hold of one of the looped handles at the edge of the bath, and we carried it outside, then threw the mucky bathwater into the yard. I took the old metal tub back into the outhouse, where it was normally kept, and hung it on a large nail that was hammered into the red-brick wall. When I came out, Carnell was still standing at the kitchen door looking at me with a witless smile on his fat face, which usually meant that he was about to say something stupid. I was freezing standing out in Gabe’s tiny garden and couldn’t be bothered to wait for one of my friend’s senseless observations, so I cut to the chase.

  “What the hell are you smiling fo’, Carnell . . . You won yourself some cash at the dog track today or someting?”

  Carnell laughed out loud at me before answering, his voice soft and reflective.

  “You gotta be kidding, no such luck, brother . . . I just got to thinking how pleased I am that you’re OK. Say, you free to meet me later in the Star and Garter, say around nine o’clock? I got someting I need to talk to you about, it’s . . .” He paused for a moment, thinking to himself before finishing what he was about to say to me. “It’s kinda important, JT.”

  The inane smile then returned back to his face as he waited for my reply. I again began to feel my body and mind aching for sleep and I rubbed the weariness out of my brow before answering him.

  “I’ll see you in the Star at nine, and you’re buying the damn beer!”

  It was the first time Carnell had ever asked to speak to me about something that he regarded as important, and despite his mindless and childish ways sometimes, I knew he would not have made the request unless it was something significant that he had on his mind, and despite how much I longed to lay my dog-tired carcass down on that bed of mine, I just didn’t h
ave the heart to refuse him.

  “Thanks, man.” He slapped the wall with the flat of his hand and turned and ambled back through the kitchen, calling back to me as he did, “C’mon, let’s go and git some o’ that pepperpot stew in our bellies, I’m starving!”

  The four of us sat and ate at the kitchen table. I was listening to my aunt Pearl and Carnell yakking on enthusiastically about the kinds of food we used to eat back home, plantain, yams, mango, and how much they missed them and why it was a shame that they couldn’t get them here in England. I remained mostly quiet during their colourful conversation, chipping in occasionally and enjoying the cheerful banter between the pair of them.

  But Gabe’s mood had changed and he sat in silence, picking at the food in front of him, his discontent seeping across the table towards me. After we had finished, Gabe got up and without speaking picked up his paper from the arm of the chair that sat besides the range and returned to the sitting room. Carnell rose from his seat shortly afterwards, sensing the awkwardness in the air, and leant down and put his muscular arm around aunt Pearl’s slight frame and hugged her. She brushed him off, dismissing his affectionate embrace of gratitude with the back of her hand.

  “Git on wid you, boy, I don’t want you soft-soaping me!” She smiled at him as his bulky frame stood over her.

  “That was some fine pepperpot stew you served up there, Mrs Pearl . . . surely fine.”

  Carnell rested his hand on my shoulder and looked down at me. “JT, I’ll see you at nine then?”

  “You sure will, Carnell . . . See you later, brother,” I replied keenly as I got up and collected each of our plates from the table and took them over to the sink, which was already filled with hot, foamy water. I heard Carnell bid farewell to Pearl and Gabe, but their genial guest did not receive a reply from my uncle.

  I stared down into the dishwater, aware that Gabe’s taciturnity was of my doing and my mind pondered on how I could approach my disgruntled relative. Pearl spoke, breaking into my troubled thoughts and bringing me promptly back to the then and now of the matter.

  “Your uncle Gabe, he means well and he’s been worried sick ’bout you, Joseph. Whatever trouble you got yourself messed up in has got him all riled up and you know he tinks the world o’ you. You’re more than just flesh and blood to him, JT, he treats you like you was his own son. And he knows you ain’t like your cousin Vic. He was so proud when you made the police. You always been on the right side o’ the law; he’s always respected that, took pride in it. Now you go in there and speak to him, you hear me, boy?”

  I took a blue and white checked tea towel from off of the draining board and dried my hands with it, folded it, then sat it back next to the sink. My aunt Pearl stared down at the table, and as I walked past her she gently touched my arm as if to say something, then turned away and faced the wall as I left the kitchen to face her troubled spouse.

  Gabe was sitting reading the sports page of Bristol Evening Post in one of a pair of green cord armchairs that directly faced the freshly made-up coal fire that was now throwing a welcome amount of heat into the small sitting room. A single standard lamp behind him shone an amber glow of light around his head and onto the back page of the newspaper.

  The woody aroma from my uncle’s cigar combined with the sooty scent that was slowly wafting up from the hearth lent the room a strangely welcoming ambience. I took a seat opposite and looked over towards him as he took a heavy draw on the thick cigar that was hooked into the left-hand corner of his mouth. Gabe stared back at me, then exhaled a thick spiral of smoke up into the air, and the dense beam of light from the lamp caught the grey vapours that were beginning to float around the room. When he finally spoke to me, his timbre was brittle and short.

  “I suppose this is what the police was questioning you about last night, was it?”

  He closed the paper, then threw it over to me, and I lifted it up in the half-light. The bold print of the newspaper’s headlines stared back at me cruelly from the front page: “Woman Found Dead in Grounds of Ashton Court”. I swallowed hard and reluctantly began to read the grisly account.

  The body of a young woman has been found in the densely wooded area known as Clarken Coombe in the grounds of the Ashton Court estate on the western edge of the city late on Monday evening. The shocking discovery was made by two wardens who were patrolling the parkland as part of the council’s attempt to prevent the poaching of the country park’s deer. The Evening Post can confirm that the identity of the deceased has been ascertained by Bristol City Constabulary. DI Fletcher, who is heading the inquiry, told the post earlier today, “At this stage in our investigations we are not prepared to release further details regarding the discovery of the body found last night due to the brutality of the crime and the significance of evidence found at the scene. I can assure the general public that everything is being done to apprehend the perpetrator of this atrocious crime. We are at the moment exploring many avenues of inquiry and will be issuing a further statement to the press shortly.”

  I folded the newspaper and dropped it at my feet, sickened at what I had just read and at myself, knowing that my brief involvement with the dead girl had most certainly contributed to her untimely and horrific murder.

  “The girl they found out in that wood . . .” I pointed down at Gabe’s paper, which sat at my feet. “Her name was Virginia Landry; I met her earlier this week. She told me she believed she’d seen that missing girl I’m looking fo’.”

  “Seen her where?” Gabe took the stubby stogie out of his mouth and rested it between two of his fingers.

  “You really don’t wanna know, Uncle Gabe”

  “Don’t wanna know or you ain’t gonna tell me?”

  Gabe sat back in his chair and took another drag on his cigar, waiting for me to answer him.

  “The less I tell you, the less mess you can git yourself into.”

  I knew I sounded glib, but my sentiment was sincere.

  “Don’t play games with me, boy. I got myself into your mess as soon as that snotty lookin’ copper came knockin’ at my door askin’ if I knew where you were on Monday night. He was wantin’ to know all kinds of tings ’bout you, so I just played along with that bobby. He looked at me thinking I was nuttin’ but a miserable, scared ole nigger who was gonna tell him how I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of you in days, then put you in the frame for whatever he wanted to finger you fo’. You shoulda seen his face when I told him you was here all night playing cards with me. Anyhow, I stood on that step out there in the street and lied my ass off, so you try tellin’ me I ain’t in enough o’ your mess as it is. Besides . . . you really think I’m gonna let my brother’s boy sit rottin’ away in some police cell?”

  “Years ago, when I was a child, my mama told me that you would always use the ‘we were playing cards all night’ number when the law came lookin’ fo’ my papa when he’d been up to no good. When I asked you last year ’bout it, you said you couldn’t remember ever doing it, said my mama had been pulling my leg. I sure am happy as hell you did the same fo’ me.”

  My uncle smiled at me and leant forward in his chair, weighing up whether I was just placating him with a little of my usual charm.

  “Boy, I know you ain’t murdered no young woman, but I’m in the dark ’bout the rest o’ what’s been going on . . . So why don’t you tell me what all this madness is about, Joseph?”

  He again rested back in his seat and rubbed at his top lip, waiting for me to begin my account of what had happened to me during the last ten days or so. A stern look of determination was etched upon his heavily lined face, which I recognised only too well. I took a deep breath and spilled my guts, leaving nothing out. Afterwards he continued to mouth and suck on what was left of his cigar, puffing out more clouds of thick smoke around us, mulling over what I had said. When he finally spoke, he surprised me with what he had to say.

  “Joseph . . . You took a big chance when you came over here to start a new life fo’ yourself. Now, your au
nt Pearl and I knew you never had any choice but to leave Barbados. We knew you were honest, knew you weren’t nuttin’ like that rascal brother o’ mine. Your papa was as crooked as the hind leg of a mule and as mean-tempered too. But you were never like him – Vic maybe, but never you. We knew you wouldn’t be on the take like some of ya colleagues back in Bridgetown and I knew you could never turn a blind eye to all the illegal stuff that was going on around you. We were proud when we heard you made a stand, son, real proud. Ellie, she wrote to us time and time again.

  “That girl told us everyting that was going on. How stubborn you had become and how determined you were to bring down those crooks on the force you was working with. Ellie knew you wouldn’t give in. She was scared fo’ you and fo’ herself and fo’ ya children, Joseph, but she respected you fo’ not turning the other cheek and fo’ standing up against that bastard thug who had his hand in all those other policemen’s pockets back at your station house . . . What was his name?”

  Gabe’s question caught me unexpectedly and I instinctively pushed my tongue under my top lip, not wanting to utter the name of the man who had caused me such pain.

  “Monroe . . . His name was Conrad Monroe.”

  I fell silent again.

  “Yeah, that’s it, Monroe. Well, you don’t need me to tell you how that bastard destroyed everyting you held dear. He took your old life, your wife, the child growing in her belly and your six-year-old daughter. You think I’m getting any pleasure saying this stuff to you? Look, I know you’ve been trying to do what’s right, you trying to find this lost mute woman an’ all, but if you think playing at being a policeman again is going to give you the chance to right old wrongs from the past, then you fooling yourself, Joseph. There are bad guys the world over and you can’t think you can take every one of them on because you still hurting fo’ the bad tings that have happened to you, boy.

  “Monroe and this man, Terrence Blanchard are the same, bad through to the bone, and there you sit thinking you’ve got nuttin’ to lose, and all because of that damn stubborn streak you got . . . But men like Blanchard will find someting to cause you some more pain . . . and you know why he will?”