The Rotting Spot (A Bruce and Bennett Mystery)

by Valerie Laws

  ‘Oh, I had steak and kidney at the pub,’ he said. So much for prayer. Julie’s face was nakedly hurt. Erica flinched on her behalf.

  ‘But Paul!’

  ‘Thought it’d save you the bother,’ he said. ‘I’m going to catch a few zeds, read the paper.’ And he trudged off upstairs.

  Julie, with a shaking hand, went over to turn off the oven. Her eyes were full of tears. Erica had the urge to hug the plump, sad figure, but that would heap coals of fire. She cast about for the right thing to say.

  ‘Men!’ she resorted to.

  Like Liz earlier, she saw Julie pull herself together. But where Liz asserted her will over her emotions, Julie assumed a martyred expression. She could comfort herself by thinking how ill used she was.

  ‘You’ve no idea. I work and slave … what with here, and at the care home…’

  ‘I’m sure the old folk appreciate your efforts,’ Erica said. She was standing now, beginning to edge towards the door.

  ‘Yes, they do.’ Her displaced anger at her family lunged at a familiar target. ‘There’s Lily, Liz and Peg’s mum. Liz brings posh chocs and such. Peg comes every day and sits with her for an hour or so. But it’s me and my colleagues that lift her on and off the loo! It’s us that listen to her ramble on! Lucy brought Toby to visit her the day before she went off, you know. Now she was a nice lass.’

  Why the past tense? Erica wondered uneasily, but she said nothing. Julie might have some juice about why Lucy went.

  ‘She used to stop by and have a bit chat with another old dear, Violet, who has no visitors of her own. Little Toby took Lily one of his paintings, supposed to be a rabbit, but bright green. Peg’s knitted toys are enough to confuse any bairn. Ever since then, it’s been, ‘Tommy painted a green rabbit. Frank died in the war. Toby painted a green rabbit. Tommy died in the war.’ She keeps thinking Toby’s called Tommy … keeps saying her husband Frank died in the war, which he didn’t, though he did fight. Oh, it’s enough to drive you mad, but Lily can’t help it.’

  ‘Well thank you so much for your time,’ Erica couldn’t wait to get out. The whole house was damp with disappointment and drying baby clothes. ‘If you hear anything, leave a message for me at Mickey’s.’

  ‘Hang on!’ Julie riffled through an old tea tin, producing a narrow strip of photos. ‘It’s me and Molly. You can borrow it, if it helps. Don’t know why I kept it all these years.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’ Erica looked at four pictures of two girls, taken in a photo booth. They were making faces and laughing. Vivid Molly with her charmingly gap-toothed smile, Julie almost unrecognisable, quite pretty, thin. When Erica left, Julie picked up the bowl of cake mix, and began to spoon it into her mouth in great, dripping glops.

  15

  Monday 23rd June

  Ivy Lodge

  ‘So you’re concentrating on the Molly angle?’ Rina had come to share Erica’s microwaved fresh soup lunch, or ‘first course’ as she called it.

  ‘I haven’t got the resources to look for Lucy. Either she’s come to harm, or she’s in hiding. If that’s the case, no-one would be likely to tell me. Either way, from what Steve’s email said, it’s because of Molly. You see, everyone assumes Molly didn’t die because she reappeared. But somebody could have killed her after the party.’

  ‘But why would they? Say somebody was worried she’d shop them, say for abuse or some such, they’d have done it sooner, surely.’

  ‘I’ve no idea why, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t. And it would be the perfect crime! It could have been at any time after the party, weeks, months, even years! There’d be no question of alibis for a start. No-one would know when she died.’

  ‘What about the body?’

  ‘The sea, Rina. Hello! Rocks and water, perfect body- disposing combo.’

  ‘Risky. She might have floated.’

  ‘But she didn’t. And several people had motives.’

  ‘The ex-boyfriend? Cherchez l’homme.’

  ‘Yes, Paul Reed. He looked murderous, Julie said, when Molly taunted him at the party.’

  ‘Or Julie. Maybe Molly told her she was coming home and wanted Paul back. Julie’d think she had no chance with Molly around. That sort of friendship can have a lot of rivalry behind it.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right.’ Had she befriended Rachel because she would not be a rival, but a sidekick? ‘Not much fun being Molly’s sidekick, all those years. Mickey said they had at least one serious scrap, a real catfight.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve got Molly’s mother in your sights, Erica. I know you’re not big on god-botherers.’

  ‘Excuse me! I don’t like them because they’re intolerant, don’t make out I’m as prejudiced as they are! On the other hand, might Peg be mad enough to murder her daughter to save her soul? Sure, she seems to have suffered, all that Stacey-stalking, but maybe she did it in a frenzy and has been trying to atone ever since.’

  Rina prised the lid off her double strength espresso. ‘I’m sure we could think of a motive for the Seatons if we tried.’

  The phone rang. Erica snatched it up, expecting news of a patient about to give birth.

  ‘Ms Bruce? Inspector Bennett here. I’ve received a complaint…’

  ‘What?’ Erica’s mood crashed like King Kong off the Empire State. Rina, seeing her expression, placed a large, square hand over Erica’s in support.

  ‘Mrs Seaton tells me you’ve been to her house, harassing her for information about her family, and adding to their distress.’

  ‘No way! One visit, and I was very careful. She threw me out, and I went as soon as she asked.’

  ‘I told you not to pursue this silly fixation with Molly Westfield…’

  ‘I wouldn’t, if you would do your job properly!’ Rina found her hand being painfully squeezed as Erica got riled.

  There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end. Erica pictured Will pushing his hair up into spikes, like Gareth Gates’ big brother, she thought scornfully.

  ‘Please don’t bother the family again.’

  ‘I don’t intend to. But if I choose to visit friends at Stony Point, that’s my affair.’ She hung up with a bang. Rina extracted her hand and shook the fingers.

  ‘Oh, sorry, Rina. I must have mistaken your hand for Bennett’s neck. Bloody Liz!’

  ‘Maybe you touched a nerve there. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m not giving up, but maybe I’d better keep a lower profile. I might have to get a bit subtle now. Find out about Molly’s and Julie’s background another way. But that fucking bastard Bennett! Nobody’ll do anything, it’s like they don’t care.’

  At that point, the phone rang again. Erica’s patient had a healthy son. They say when someone comes into the world, someone goes out.

  Wednesday 25th June

  Stony Point Hostel

  Darkness. Stony Point was deserted, the hostel closed for the night, the pub over the footbridge closed. In the silence, the sea shushed unnecessarily below. Someone stood on the cliff edge, by the rotting spot. Vodka and excitement flamed inside, at what was about to be revealed. The ultimate skull- hunter’s prize, soon to be held in reverent hands. Tonight. Tonight she would emerge from her earthy chrysalis in all her beauty.

  Thursday 26th June

  Stony Point Hostel

  Erica had no premonition of disaster as she returned to Stony Point hostel in the middle of Thursday morning.

  She propped her bike up and went in, shouting, ‘Hey Mickey!’ No reply. Erica could just make out a muttering voice suddenly interrupted by a burst of music. Mickey’s TV, in his bedroom. Erica called again, walking into his sitting room, her trainers scrunching on sandy soil underfoot. Trust Mickey, leaving it for Fiona to sweep up …

  There was someone there. Smiling with dead and empty eyes, the wide smile of the lipless, skinless skull. Sitting on the table, in a little drift of soil, a human face, elegant and vulnerable.

  ‘Mickey!’ Erica yelled, her heart starting to rac
e. What had the idiot done? Robbed the fucking graveyard, that’s what. His sly hints about completing his skull collection … she dashed upstairs to the chaos that was Mickey’s bedroom, but the TV was talking to itself. Down again, and out into the garden.

  ‘Mickey! Mickey!’

  A gull replied mockingly.

  ‘Fuck off, you.’ Erica was running round the perimeter of the garden. Fit as she was, her chest was heaving. ‘Where are you, Mickey, you bloody –’

  She stopped short. A cluster of gulls rose shrieking at her arrival. The rotting spot was ruined. The basket lay askew, the heads all tumbled about, the soil disturbed. Years of ant architecture destroyed. It looked like a predator attack, except that the disturbance had a hollow centre. Something had been dug up from the rotting spot. Something about the size of a human head.

  Erica yelled again. No reply. She looked over the cliff. The water was no longer licking at the rock. Slow and subtle on the beach, the turn of the tide was swift in the harbour, as the force of the river’s flow carried the water out to sea.

  Erica squatted down, trying to think straight. Her first thought had been to make Mickey put his trophy back in the churchyard. But things were different now. The skull had been buried in the rotting spot. Who but Mickey could have put it there? Hidden away, perhaps for years. So where had he got the skull from? Her urge to protect him from his own folly fought with the feeling that he’d gone too far this time. Where was he?

  Sick dread surfaced as she sat there in the smell of decay the strengthening sun was releasing from the jumbled skulls. She pulled out the strip of photos Julie had given her. Molly putting her tongue out, Molly turned sideways, Molly full face and smiling. The fetching gap between her front teeth, the left incisor slightly crooked. It was a smile she’d just seen, on the table. ‘Looking for Molly!’ Cold sweat drenched her, and she retched over the cliff, bringing up nothing but bile. The taste of it reminded her of years before, when she’d make herself vomit after giving way to hunger. She breathed deeply, bent double, hands braced on her thighs. Something glinted below, caught in a grass tussock on the cliffside. A piece of clear glass, part of a bottle neck. Like part of a vodka bottle.

  She completed her circuit of the walls. No sign of Mickey. She slowed, reluctant to face that innocent smile again. But she might have been mistaken. It might be from the old graves after all.

  The TV upstairs sounded loud despite her heaving breaths. It was still there, of course it was. A delicate skull, with a fetchingly gap-toothed smile. Molly. It had to be.

  Erica sat down. Without taking her eyes from the hollow sockets in front of her, she fumbled in her bag for her Rescue Remedy, and with all the muscular control she could manage, placed a few drops on her tongue. The astringent herbal taste helped her to focus. Then she used her mobile, reported a possible suspicious death, and asked specifically for the message to be passed on to Inspector Bennett. The phone seemed too small to take in the enormity of what she had to say. She looked round the familiar scruffy, chaotic room. The skulls, the stuffed birds, had taken on a more sinister air now. Erica thought of her delighted discovery of the puffin’s corpse; it seemed to have happened to someone entirely different, a very long time ago.

  Luckily Mickey’s closed day lasted from Wednesday afternoon to four o’clock on Thursday. The thought of Fiona or some other local walking in, made Erica stay where she was, instead of searching for Mickey. She had a weird sort of terror that the skull would vanish if she took her eyes off it again. Like Mickey.

  Distant engines, urgent feet. The door bounced off the wall, a familiar sound amid all the strangeness. As Will Bennett, Hassan Massum, a WPC and a wispy-haired, stooping, pink-cheeked man entered, Erica resisted an urge to snatch up the skull and hold it in her arms. She felt a sad tenderness for the little face.

  Bennett’s face registered shock and then concern, as he turned to Erica and introduced WPC Sally Banner. Massum looked at the skull with compassion. Sally was young, with cropped sand-gold hair and a freckled, gamine face pale with excitement. Chasing lads away from the metro line was the most scary thing she’d done so far.

  ‘Erica, perhaps Sally could make a cup of tea … you must have had a terrible shock.’

  Cup of tea! She almost laughed. His hackneyed response released her anger, and gave her a welcome shot of adrenalin.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks. Why don’t I make Sally and you gentlemen a cup of tea. It’s obviously going to be her or me, since having a uterus qualifies us to make hot drinks in a crisis.’

  Bennett flushed at her rejection of his sympathy. Sally put an arm round Erica’s shoulders.

  ‘Just try to stay calm,’ Bennett said fatally.

  ‘I am calm, so far.’ Erica, stepped out of Sally’s encompassing arm. ‘And I’d like to calmly point out, that I tried to have Molly’s case reopened. I warned you there was something rotten at Stony Point, and nobody listened. Well, here she is.’

  ‘I did try, actually, I spoke to the super…’

  ‘He did, really,’ put in Massum. ‘By the way, this is Dr Johnstone. Ms Bruce, Doc.’

  ‘Call me Erica.’ Ashamed of her tirade in the presence of death.

  Johnstone’s voice was dry as sandy soil. ‘First we’ll have to see if we’re dealing with a recent death. Then we’ll try to have the skull identified, though I can see at a glance it’s female. No supraorbital ridges, vertical forehead, small mastoid.’ He picked up the skull, leaving a little drift of soil on the table and two ants scurrying away. ‘The age we can work out from the teeth, especially if the subject was under twenty or so. I take it you believe it to be Molly Westfield…’

  Erica handed him the photo strip.

  ‘Mm, a marked resemblance in the dental formation. We’d need to know where it’s been and for how long…’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ Erica said. Bennett brightened. Action was so much easier than words. He’d wanted to take Erica in his arms, when he’d seen her standing protectively next to the bare, dead face.

  She showed Will the devastated rotting spot.

  ‘I think she’s been in there for years and years. Rotting. That’s what it’s for, the rotting spot.’ Her voice shook. ‘Lucy and I stood right here, five years ago, talking about her. She was under our feet, almost.’ She hugged herself, holding herself together. Will stirred, out of his depth, unsure how to respond to her sudden vulnerability.

  Luckily for him, the Doc turned up, peering into the hole. ‘We’ll have to test the soil, here and inside the skull. Takes twice as long for a body to decay underground as in open air, and this soil is dry. It might take many years to lose all the soft tissue.’

  Will stiffened, leaning forward. He fitted a plastic evidence bag over his hand. Something glinted in the earth. They all stared at the tiny silver fan Will plucked out, caked with soil. A small ring at the top showed where something had been attached. The remains of a silver tassel hung below.

  ‘Some sort of jewellery,’ said Will.

  ‘I think it’s an earring.’ Doc examined the trinket. ‘They were fashionable in the late Seventies. It was the New Romantic look…’

  The two young people looked at Doc, so spare and dry. They would have found it hard to recognise his younger self, frilly shirt, mascara and asymmetric haircut. A younger self who had almost choked on a similar earring while snogging.

  Will bagged it. ‘Where’s Spence?’ he asked. ‘Does he know about all this?’

  Erica pointed out the shard of glass. ‘I’m worried about him. I think he may have fallen. He sometimes drank vodka, and he got drunk very easily.’

  ‘Would the tide be up or down the harbour? The incoming tide washes upstream…’

  ‘Please, find him, he might be injured or…’

  ‘Apart from anything else,’ Will went on, ‘we need to question him. Somebody put that skull in the ground here, and someone dug it up again. And someone cut the head off.’

  ‘At least it’ll be easy to cordon off
the headland for the CSIs. We can just rope off the bridge. Come on, let’s have that tea.’

  Inside, Massum was scraping soil from the table into a bag. Doc examined the base of the skull. ‘No signs of sawing. Could have been removed with some kind of sharp blade, a scalpel even. No clumsy damage to the bone. Looks like somebody skilled in that sort of work did it.’

  Erica looked automatically at the drawer where Mickey kept his skull hunting scalpels and sharps. She looked away, but Will had seen her looking. He set his empty mug down decisively.

  ‘We assume it’s Molly, while we wait for the Doc’s report.’

  ‘What about the relatives?’ Massum’s voice was leaden. The police officers exchanged looks. They weren’t looking forward to facing Peg Westfield. Sally’s heart sank. As the female, she’d be bound to be lumbered with this worst of jobs.

  ‘Well, a girl’s been missing and now we have a female skull.’ Will sounded thoughtful. ‘Maybe the family can identify the earring.’

  ‘It’ll have to be soon, Guv,’ said Sally. ‘When the folk at Hex Tower see all this police activity, they’ll think we’ve found Lucy’s body. That would be awful.’

  ‘Well at least this isn’t Lucy,’ said Will. ‘That seems certain. Though it’s still bad news for the Seatons. Whoever did this was at large when Lucy disappeared. They might have done the same to her.’

  A murder enquiry, twenty-five years on; Molly had never left Stony Point. Spence had a lot of explaining to do, if he turned up. Officers in white suits carrying cases passed them on the footbridge as they left.

  Will set up an incident room in the pub, and Fiona was told her job was on hold. Gil agreed to head off anyone heading for the hostel, and either put them up or find them elsewhere to stay. He couldn’t help reflecting on the extra custom all the police officers would bring, to say nothing of the media. In fact, saying nothing was not an option he favoured, and he sloped off to ring the tabloids while Will went to inform Peg Westfield and the Seatons.