The Rotting Spot (A Bruce and Bennett Mystery)

by Valerie Laws

  Mind you, she thought, her mouth filled with Jaffa cakes and tea. No wonder he wasn’t keen, with her like this. Fat and forty plus. And she’d never been very good in the bedroom department, truth to tell. She could never quite shake off the feeling that he was thinking of Molly. Julie couldn’t forget she’d been his second choice. The triumphant joy of getting him hadn’t lasted long. She’d thought of Molly when her three children were born, who should have been Molly’s. As she and Paul celebrated their wedding anniversaries. If celebrated was the word.

  Part of Julie felt that Molly would come back one day. Like something from a horror film that just won’t die. And she’d crook her finger, and Paul would go to her. And she’d be left behind again. But then, she’d stolen Molly’s life. The children, the husband, the lot. Paul would have been better off with Molly, and he knew it, she was sure. Now, standing in her neat empty kitchen, she stuffed the last Jaffa cake into her mouth – where had they all gone? You didn’t get many for the price … She felt bloated and choked, full of sugary paste like an icing bag. She wanted to squeeze it all back out again. But it stayed with her. Because food didn’t leave.

  Erica propped her bike against the white painted walls of Stony Point Hostel. She was standing on the headland, strictly speaking an island with a small footbridge spanning the cut blasted by a previous mine-owner to provide an extra harbour. The cut never worked; it refused to fill with water enough to float a ship, even the fishing cobles that still puttered out bravely into the hostile sea from the harbour proper. Sulky pools of semi-stagnant water, thrown in at high tides, lay among the rocks. Occasionally large rats could be seen scurrying purposefully along the horizontal fissures in the walls. The footbridge had securely fenced rails, covered by thick netting.

  A solid stone built house painted white, withstanding all the winter storms with chilly indifference, on sunny days the hostel looked almost Mediterranean. A low wall enclosed a garden of tough, salty, windwhipped grass. Small windows shunned the sea views. It had been built at a time when protection from bitter weather was more important than a view.

  Around the walls ran a path, perilously near the cliff edge at its most eastern point, surrounded by grassy slopes as you looked more westerly. The green area ran down to the little harbour, black silt at low tide, full with the moored boats rocking at high tides, when the river appeared to run backwards. As the sun sank behind the woods further over to the west, shadows flooded the headland, while the sea still reflected a warm glow. Erica hadn’t visited Mickey Spence since she and Lucy fell out. Small groups of young people sat on the wall talking, listening to CDs or with mobiles glued to the sides of their heads. Families strolled around the headland, or across the bridge to the Stone Arms. Erica had timed her visit for just after dinner, when some would be washing up, the other guests dispersing for the evening.

  Through the back door; now the door of Mickey’s private sitting room was in front of her. She went in without knocking. Mickey was sitting at his rickety table licking his knife. His face lit up, milky eyes bulging.

  ‘Erica! Hello, pet! Here, make us a coffee, there’s a love. Right shower we’ve got in tonight, I don’t know…’ He lit a fag and blew smoke, scratching his bald head. It was like she’d never left.

  ‘Hi Mickey.’ Her feet on automatic pilot carried her into the kitchen where the aga scowled, the huge kettle flumping permanently on top of it. She moved the kettle onto the ring, and it started to spit and steam. The heat from the range was stifling. She spooned instant coffee from a massive tin, followed by four spoons of sugar from a crusty bag leaning precariously on the worktop. Sure enough, the box of herbal tea bags she’d bought years before was still in the cupboard. The normal rules of time, and hygiene, were suspended at Stony Point. She blew thick dust off the box. She was jiggling the teabag up and down, when a young girl walked in.

  ‘Hi!’ she said to Erica. She grabbed a can of coke out of the frost-choked fridge groaning in a corner, and left. Sixteen, seventeen, the 2003 version of Erica, or Lucy. Or Molly, come to that. All Mickey’s summer assistants were pretty.

  ‘That’s Fiona,’ said Mickey, as Erica put his coffee in front of him. ‘Pub landlord’s daughter. Rules me with a rod of iron. As bad as you, eh, heh heh…’ his sea lion laugh ended in a coughing fit. He sipped the black syrupy coffee.

  If Mickey liked someone, nothing they did or said subsequently would change his opinion. He would strain his brain to think of far-fetched excuses for them. If he took against someone, that was that. He hated them implacably from then on. He liked all the young girls he employed as summer assistants. He liked Erica. So there was no reproachful questioning about why she hadn’t been near the place in five years.

  Erica felt a ridiculous rush of affection at both his acceptance of her and his characteristic remark about Fiona. Mickey had a gift for management that could have been profitably copied by any great corporation. When each new girl arrived, he greeted them with friendly welcome, asked them to sit down, and refused all offers of help cheerfully, sweeping, chopping vegetables, folding sheets, saying, ‘No hurry to get started, you just take your time,’ until each girl found herself joining in, then taking over. Within two days, she was doing everything, looking after Mickey like a mother, while he persisted in behaving as if she was forcing him to be waited on. As a result, the assistants worked hard, felt no resentment, adored Mickey, and returned year after year until they moved on.

  On a shelf in the sitting room was a full vodka bottle, a dead mole and half a Mars bar. The mole had been injected with formaldehyde. She had never been sure about the Mars bar. It had been there in her day, he liked chocolate, so it probably had. Skulls, stuffed birds feathered anew with dust, dog-eared reference books, filled the room.

  Erica took the bag containing the puffin’s head from her backpack. ‘Thought I’d put this in your rotting spot.’

  ‘Ah,’ he studied the head minutely. ‘Very nice! Go ahead, be my guest!’

  He sprang to his feet, slopping coffee onto the table, and left his mug half full. In a remote corner of the garden, just outside the garden wall, was the rotting spot. A baker’s metal bread basket stood up ended over the skulls, to keep off predators. Squatting in the sandy rectangle of soil, the heads. A hare. A guillemot. A shag. A tiny great tit. A fox. A great black-backed gull. A buzz of flies smoked above the site. Mickey watched proudly as Erica placed the puffin’s head with the others. Strange bedfellows indeed.

  ‘Nothing very exciting,’ said Mickey. ‘Not much about these days. But you never know, eh? Still got your horse?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It has pride of place on my desk.’

  ‘Still waiting for my human skull,’ Mickey went on. ‘I’ll get one, you’ll see. I hoped Lucy’d be able to get me a head from the hospital, but it’s tricky apparently.’ Erica had a bizarre mental picture of Lucy casually dropping a deceased patient’s head into her bag on her way home. ‘Still, I’ll manage it somehow. I’m not a skull-hunter for nothing!’ He shot her a sly look.

  ‘D’you ever read the skull-hunter’s weblog, Mickey?’ His remark about the human skull had reminded her.

  He shot another look at her. ‘I do, from time to time. It’s very good, isn’t it? Speaks for us all.’

  ‘It’s not, well, you, is it Mickey? Your website? I’ve wondered…’

  ‘God no! I don’t have time for that. And it’s a bit high- flown for me. I’m a plain and simple chap.’

  I wonder. ‘I hear Lucy’s gone missing.’ Erica changed the subject.

  ‘That holy roller aunt of hers would make anybody go awol. I told her, if I found out I had a soul, I’d have it surgically removed. Said she’d pray for me. Bloody nerve!’

  ‘You’re past praying for Mickey. I, er, hear Lucy had a little boy.’

  ‘Oh yes, young Toby. Often brings him here to see my specimens. Gave him a gannet’s skull for his own. Pleased as punch he was. ‘Course, Lucy would have access to bones in her line of work, but not g
annets.’

  ‘How’s Lucy’s mum?’

  ‘She’s taken leave of absence from work, I hear. Can’t be far from retirement. Damn good-looking woman though. Always has been. You can see how she got Seymour. Always a one for the women, Seymour. Proper Jack the lad. They were round him like moths round a green-painted light bulb.’

  Mickey had done this to all the hostel light bulbs, giving a ghastly light and attracting clouds of moths. Erica liked their plump mild furry features, the way they sat on her finger so trustingly. But it did make for a gloomy ambience.

  ‘Liz has it all, doesn’t she? Beautiful, clever, successful, handsome husband, lovely daughter…’

  ‘You can see why Peg’s always been green with envy. Green as, erm…’

  ‘As a moth-attracting lightbulb?’

  ‘Exactly! I remember when we were at primary school, somebody twigged the sisters had the princess’ names. You know, Elizabeth and Margaret.’

  ‘So?’ Erica’s only interest in royalty was in how anyone could be interested.

  ‘But they were the wrong way round, you see. Liz, the younger sister, had the oldest princess’s name. The one that was going to be queen. The kids teased Peg about it, said her little sister was Queen Elizabeth, and Peg ran home crying it wasn’t fair. She was a right little goody goody in school. Only thing she was good at was cookery and sewing. Won prizes for needlework. ‘Course, Liz wasn’t interested, so Peg could kid herself she was better than Liz at something.’

  ‘Well,’ Erica as ever started playing devil’s advocate. ‘It must have been important to Peg’s self esteem…’

  ‘Not for long! When Liz announces she wants to be a surgeon, Peg does her nut. Go on, guess why!’

  ‘I suppose because Liz was going to have a high status career?’

  ‘No, it was the sewing! What does a surgeon do? Sews folk up! Peg couldn’t believe Liz could be a surgeon when she wasn’t as good at embroidery as she was! Woman’s batty. Makes all these stuffed animals for charity, sitting knitting like some ghoul by a guillotine, but they’re all the wrong colours! Have you ever seen a lilac squirrel?’

  ‘Not that I can recall.’ Erica tried to change the subject.

  ‘It’s so beautiful here, Mickey.’

  ‘Great summers, those, when you and Lucy worked here. Eh, Erica? Eeh, between the two of you, I had a hell of a life! Talk about bossy!’

  They were strolling round the hostel. The sun had sunk, though the sky would be luminous for hours yet. The sea was dark as a fulmar’s eye.

  ‘Lucy’ll turn up again. You’ll see.’

  ‘Molly Westfield didn’t.’

  ‘Oh aye. Worked here, oh, ’77and ’78. That was the year she went. Started here in June after her O’Levels. Later she had a big bust-up with her mam and dad. She lived in here, went off in, must’ve been August. Strong-minded girl, kept me up to the mark! Peg didn’t want her working here. Said I was ‘godless.’ Better than gormless, I said.’ He laughed his lung-cancerous laugh. ‘Molly went her own way. Always did. Had the devil in her. Went underground. Still lying low.’

  Erica found herself wondering how eccentric Mickey was, or whether he was missing some normal human emotions. As a teenager, she’d enjoyed his odd anarchic spirit without question. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

  ‘Does it never occur to you, someone might have, well, harmed Molly? Or that Lucy might be in danger?’

  ‘No way! That’s so not likely!’ Mickey occasionally picked up the speech patterns of his young guests and assistants, and it sat oddly with his appearance and age.

  ‘Mind, I wouldn’t put it past Peg. Probably thought she’d be saving her soul if she did her in.’ His tone gained in enthusiasm. ‘She’s not normal, Erica. Daughter goes missing, then she drives her poor old husband to a stroke. As for Lucy…’

  ‘Come on, Mickey, why would Peg want to harm Lucy?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you she was envious of Liz? After Molly went, Liz wasn‘t only cleverer and prettier, and richer, and more successful, she had a daughter, while Peg had none!’

  He sounded positively excited now. He was oblivious to the fact that they were both fond of Lucy; his extreme prejudice against Peg Westfield made him almost want her to have committed a terrible double crime. What else might Mickey do, out of that kind of unreasoning hatred?

  ‘Nah,’ he said again, on a falling, disappointed note.

  ‘They’ll be ok, Peg’s too much of a loser to do anybody in.’ Then he must have felt even he had been a bit harsh. ‘I will say for Peg, she’d make a good skull-hunter. She’s good with a knife. All that cookery, you know. And of course helping George in his butcher’s shop. She can skin and joint a rabbit in no time.’

  They walked over the footbridge to where the pub’s windows glowed warm out of its thick, cold walls. It reminded Erica of the turnip lanterns they’d made at Halloween when she was a child.

  ‘I really ought to be getting back, it’s dark for cycling.’

  ‘Stay the night! Fiona’s not living in. The assistant’s room is empty. You know where everything is.’

  So Erica was back, thought Mickey happily. All his girls, his pretty girls, they all came back. Some of them never really left.

  He introduced Erica to Fiona’s dad, the landlord. She bought drinks, gin and slimline tonic for herself, and Mickey’s favourite vodka with sticky neat orange squash.

  She noticed a man at the end of the bar, sitting hunched over a tumbler. He looked up; Lucy’s dad. As always, the striking resemblance to Lucy struck her, this time with a pang of loss, but then she took in how much he’d changed. The sunlit-river eyes were muddied, sunken in trampled folds. Lines scored the forehead above the elegant arching brows, and enclosed the upper lip like brackets. The thick hair was frosted with grey, which could have been attractive except for its dull dryness. All the light had gone out of him.

  ‘Hello, Seymour,’ she said awkwardly. What to say to someone who’s daughter’s gone, maybe dead? ‘How’re you keeping?’

  ‘Ah, Ricci, isn’t it? I heard you’d popped up again. Bearing up, you know, bearing up. Trying not to worry. Lucy can take care of herself. She’ll be back!’ His voice was still resonant and warm, but he was speaking with such care it was obvious he was drunk. ‘Another Scotch!’ he waved his glass at the landlord.

  ‘Looking gorgeous as ever, Ricci.’ It seemed strange to be called by Lucy’s name for her. ‘Wish I was a few years younger!’

  Erica flinched. It would have to be more than a few, she thought. She felt nothing but pity and revulsion for this alcohol-soaked man, and his inappropriate compliments to his missing daughter’s friend.

  ‘Haven’t seen you about for a while. Hang on…’ he threw back the new Scotch the barman put in front of him. Erica noticed his drinks came from a bottle of expensive single malt on a shelf, away from all the other whiskies. His own personal bottle?

  His throat convulsed around the fiery drink as if in protest. Erica thought fleetingly of Will Bennett’s strong, healthy throat, and felt both angry and sad at the damage Seymour Seaton was doing to himself. Addiction was such a seductive and possessive lover. She’d had her own flirtation with it, after all, a negative addiction to starvation rather than a positive one to a substance.

  He pulled himself up and moved round the bar, one hand on it like a rookie ice skater on the rinkside, to stand over her. The smell of booze was like chemical warfare. ‘You will lemme know if you hear from Lucy? Nice to see you sweetheart, gotta get back to Liz. She’s frantic y’know.’

  He walked carefully out of the bar into the night.

  ‘Good old Seymour,’ said Mickey approvingly. ‘Can’t half put it away! He’s in here every night, til closing time. What a guy! Nice of him to go back early for Liz’s sake.’

  This was typical Mickey. Liz was presumably left alone every other night. Was it her own presence that had driven him home early, Erica wondered.

  ‘I had no idea Lucy’s dad was an alcoholi
c.’ Erica was trying to remember him in the late Nineties. Had Lucy seen him rolling home drunk? She’d said nothing. Erica, a self-centred teenager, hadn’t noticed anything on the rare occasions she’d seen him in passing. He was just Lucy’s dad.

  Mickey looked surprised. ‘Alcoholic! Rubbish! He can drink a whole bottle of Scotch and still walk home to Hex Tower! Does it all the time!’

  The landlord, Gil, chipped in. ‘He’s been hitting it more since Lucy went.’

  ‘Man for the ladies at one time. Well, flirting you know. Then after Molly went, he turned in on himself. And he dotes on Lucy,’ said Mickey, putting his sticky glass down on the bar empty. ‘She’s his princess. More crazy about her than he is about Liz, if you ask me.’

  ‘Paging Dr Freud,’ muttered Erica.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Another drink, Mickey?’ She’d have to be careful. Mickey was susceptible to alcohol. It didn’t take much to make him very drunk. It was time she nailed her colours to the mast anyway. The pub seemed the best place to do it. The landlord obligingly said, as he put another round in front of them, ‘So what brings you back to Stony Point then Erica?’

  ‘I’m looking into Molly Westfield’s disappearance.’ She said it loudly. ‘Lucy, er, asked me to, before she went. Sort of.’

  A vaguely paunchy, balding man in his forties slid off his stool at the end of the bar, and carried his pie and chips to a corner table.

  ‘What are you, detective, reporter?’ Gil’s tone had grown wary.

  ‘Oh, no. Just concerned. I see you do food.’ She gestured across at the pie and pint man. ‘Got anything vegetarian?’

  ‘Chips?’

  Erica shuddered. Gil tried again.

  ‘Bread? And cheese.’ He added this second ingredient as if making a huge concession to the alternative lifestyle.

  ‘Is it vegetarian cheese?’ Erica asked.

  ‘Well, it’s from a cow, and cows eat grass.’