Like False Money

by Penny Grubb

  ‘Milesthorpe Green,’ Terry Martin’s voice announced, as Annie grabbed the remote and froze him.

  Her mind leapt to touch disconnected ideas as she took the film through jerky backward movements to the jam and fruit affair. She let the film play again.

  The mundane recital of show winners cut abruptly to an outdoor scene at dusk. The camera faced a house front, the only background noise the soft wheeze of Terry Martin’s breathing as he zoomed in on one of the windows. No sign or sound of life anywhere near him. When he spoke, his voice was back at the surreptitious level he’d used to stalk the disappointing concrete bunker at Spurn. Without the rush of the sea Annie could make out his words.

  ‘Beckes split over brook.’ That sly undertone again and a soft laugh.

  The picture wobbled. He stopped zooming in on the house from a standstill and approached on foot.

  ‘Mrs Becke’s secret affair.’ Something about the furtive satisfaction in his tone made Annie’s skin crawl. ‘Who’s the lucky guy? And how much does Mr Becke know, I wonder.’

  ‘Just fuck off!’

  Though she’d heard it before, the shriek still made Annie jump. From the gasp and the jolt Annie was sure Terry Martin had thought himself alone. The lens swung at dizzying speed, gave one brief shot of the enraged woman. Late twenties, maybe thirty. A small slim woman. Her face filled the screen for just a second then the film cut from the still of dusk to the crowds and noise of a sunny afternoon on Milesthorpe Green.

  Mentally she flagged the episode and noted the surname it had given her. She sat back with her sandwiches and watched the crowds who might be contestants in a garish colours competition. What on earth was she to tell the Martins about this disconnected collection?

  She remembered the notebook with its torn page. What she looked at on the screen now was surely Milesthorpe Show. He’d filmed these sequences on the Sunday of the show. And he’d died nine days later, exactly a week ago. As he’d strolled across Milesthorpe Green with his camera Terry Martin had nine days left to live. A cold shiver ran through her.

  The scene changed again. Still Milesthorpe Show but this must be a different part of the green. Small children clad in huge hats and padded protective clothing raced through the heat on their ponies like old-fashioned knights in miniature.

  The crowds were incidental background now. Terry Martin concentrated on the ponies, mostly at a distance. Occasionally, a horse and rider flew by close at hand and leapt a pole balanced across a line of concrete blocks. He might cull some good action shots from this sequence to accompany his show report. Suddenly, events hit closer to home. Two ponies raced at the obstacle. Terry Martin was unprepared for them to swerve out at the last moment and almost run him down. Annie couldn’t help laughing as he backed off hurriedly and went over backwards in a tangle of legs as the ponies flew by. No good stills from the close up of hoofs and flying clods of mud.

  Cut again to a familiar sequence. The winners in groups. She smothered a yawn and wondered how long this would last.

  The sight of a grinning Laura Tunbridge grabbed her attention for a moment. Laura sat astride a small brown pony and accepted a red rosette and a cup.

  Annie waited for Terry Martin to speak and maybe spell out her name, but he remained silent. Of course he already knew her, but he seemed to lose interest. The camera swung away from the winners, raked the crowd, then drew back. She realized he’d filmed this from quite a distance away. The background boom of tannoy announcements was audible but not clear enough to make sense. He’d get no words or pictures in print from this one.

  The camera swung in lazy arcs and zoomed only occasionally, once to focus on a group of three girls leaving the field. Two rode ponies, the other a bicycle. Annie recognized Laura Tunbridge again, but couldn’t say for certain whether the other two were Kay Dearlove and Mally Fletcher – the best-friend and the one who’d said she’d kill Terry Martin. She felt uneasy that Terry had chosen to pick them out of the crowds.

  Another close-up was on a couple talking by the dismantled remains of an awning. The woman was the one who’d told Terry Martin to fuck off, presumably Mrs Becke. Maybe the man was the secret lover.

  Annie wondered what had first brought Terry to a village ten miles from his home, and what connection he had with the people there.

  It took a moment to realize that one of Terry’s random cuts had taken the film away from Milesthorpe Green, away from the sunny outdoors. One moment the screen had shown the tired crowds, the next it was dark and all background noise had gone.

  Terry Martin was in a cellar. Annie had to squint at the screen to compensate for the lack of light in the shot. She made out a corridor and ragged lengths of timber hanging from dilapidated walls. The only sounds were Terry Martin’s breathing and a steady drip of water.

  ‘Got you now, Mr Balham.’

  Annie allowed herself a sigh of exasperation. That was Terry Martin’s surreptitious voice again, but constrained as though something restricted his breathing.

  There was a flurry as the camera wobbled. Annie had the impression he’d swapped it to his other hand.

  A wooden door swam into focus from the shadow. The shot dropped to floor level and steadied at an angle. Terry Martin had put the camera on the ground while he dealt with the door. Annie watched as the Martins’ son appeared from behind the camera. She stared closely, curious to know what he looked like, but in the gloom he was little more than a silhouette, a small man bent over in the darkness, his back to the lens. Sound as much as movement told her he wrestled with a key in the lock. Then the camera was hoisted to shoulder level and the door pushed open. The murkiness lifted a little as though the light were better beyond the door.

  Annie took in the briefest impression of a largish room as ramshackle as the corridor before the picture dropped.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Terry Martin’s cry choked itself in a gasp.

  A flurry of movement. The camera slewed through bizarre angles. Terry Martin retched and choked as he fought for breath.

  Annie heard his feet slip on the rubble of the floor, saw his backward stumble in the sudden upward swing of the lens. Then it steadied. One clear shot into the room. A second and a half.

  ‘Oh my God!’ The words came involuntarily, as Annie clapped her hands to her mouth and echoed Terry Martin.

  A large woman, Pat’s size at least, slumped backwards. All elements of the scene hit simultaneously. The splayed legs, the skirt ridden high, the hint of lace beneath it. The woman’s head lolled at an impossible angle, her eyes stared, her tongue protruded gross and blackened. And at her neck a ligature bit deep.

  The camera’s incoherence charted Terry Martin’s fight to escape; to keep to his feet. His frantic flailing must have caught the camera controls. There was a sudden zoom. A momentary close up of what was left of an eye in a gaping socket. A fat white worm wriggled and took centre stage.

  Cut.

  CHAPTER 4

  ANNIE STOOD IN front of the television, no memory of the move that had taken her from sitting to upright. Barely noticed, her bread and cheese bounced on to the carpet, a plate clattered against the leg of the coffee table. For a few seconds, the screen played a frantic blizzard into the room, then it blanked leaving no trace of the bloated features now etched on Annie’s mind.

  He’d found his big story. The thought whirled in her brain. Terry Martin of all people had uncovered a murder.

  A part of her wanted to pull out the disk and smash it to pieces. The Martins didn’t need this. They’d seen Terry’s big story in terms of a learned treatise on Spurn Point, him as a David Attenborough figure giving a weighty commentary. Annie thought of Terry stalking a concrete bunker, looking for evidence of sinister night-time activity; creeping up to Mrs Becke’s house at dusk with his sly comments about a secret lover. Uncovering a gruesome murder was exactly the sort of thing he’d dreamt of doing. Then she remembered his panic as he’d entered that cellar. Living the dream hadn’t been so good.

&
nbsp; And how on earth did she tell his parents what he’d found?

  At the same time, a small part of her mind stood back and began to analyse. What had he unearthed? Whose remains had he found? Had he filmed the woman alive? If Annie were to rerun the film would she find the victim in an earlier scene grinning from behind a giant onion, or wandering about in the crowds on Milesthorpe Green?

  The woman’s body had begun to decay, but given the sweltering weather, not that much. Her death wasn’t ancient history. Whoever strangled her had done it recently. Terry Martin had filmed Milesthorpe Show on the Sunday and nine days later he’d died. Sometime in that nine days he’d found and filmed the woman in the cellar.

  ‘Oh my God. Pat …’

  But Pat wasn’t here. Annie was alone. She grabbed at her phone and dialled Pat’s mobile only to hear the tone sing out from the empty bedroom.

  ‘Yeah, great,’ she shouted out at the chirpy ring-tone. ‘So much for keeping your phone on at all times.’

  She paused to take a deep breath, rerunning the advice she’d given Laura Tunbridge outside the church. What were her options? Easy answer. There weren’t options, plural. She knew exactly what she had to do. This had crossed official boundaries without ambiguity. She had to call the police.

  Still she hesitated. It seemed wrong that she, the new employee, the temp who hadn’t been employed to get involved, should call the police into the heart of the agency’s business. Pat should be here to take the reins, to make the call. What would Vince say when he found out?

  The television hummed gently, ready to spring to life and replay the disk at the press of a button. Annie retrieved the remote from the floor so she could turn it off. She watched herself hold it away from her body between thumb and forefinger as though the images had leaked out to infect it.

  Get a grip. Do what has to be done. She stood up straight. There could be no question of ersatz drama here. And anyway, she had no need to speak to an anonymous voice in a call centre. She grabbed her coat and scrabbled through the pockets. Where was that card?

  Her fingers felt the size of fat sausages and the buttons on the phone shrank to pinheads, but she fumbled through the number and listened to the ring tone. Charles Tremlow, the nervy man at the funeral, hadn’t managed to get out a coherent story when he’d phoned in a panic to report finding Terry Martin’s body. Jennifer implied they didn’t even know how many bodies he’d found. There was something about talking to a stranger … maybe Tremlow had felt it too. Calm. She must be calm.

  Answer. Please answer. Don’t let it be voicemail.

  ‘Hello? Jennifer Flanagan here.’

  ‘Jennifer, it’s Annie Raymond from the PI agency. We met at Terry Martin’s funeral. I need your help.’

  Annie paced back and forth wearing a track across the longest stretch of carpet the flat had to offer. Jennifer had promised to come out with a colleague as soon as she could. But why weren’t they here? She paused to stare out at the estuary where rippling patterns in the water wove around and through each other painting the surface of one of the world’s most treacherous shipping lanes. So much hidden beneath the surface. Then she rushed back to the other side of the flat, to the kitchen where the window looked out over the road, where she’d see Jennifer arrive, or Pat.

  Annie kicked herself for not sounding more panicked on the phone. She’d gone to the opposite extreme from Tremlow, but now realized she’d been every bit as incoherent downplaying the enormity of what she’d found.

  ‘But how urgent is it? What is it you’ve found? I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s evidence of a crime. A serious crime. One of the cases I’m working on.’ The memory of the decomposing body inhibited her. She didn’t want to try to describe it, couldn’t even bring herself to say Terry Martin’s name aloud.

  ‘We have to come into Hull to get a witness statement. We could call in. About half an hour … maybe an hour. But if it’s really urgent then you should call direct.’

  How urgent was it? Too late for the woman in the cellar. ‘That’s fine. Half an hour’s fine.’

  Only it wasn’t. Pace – pace – pace.

  The sound of a car slowing to turn the corner had Annie at full stretch straining to see. Not a police car. She followed the course of the large blue people-carrier as it approached and pulled up across the road.

  Pat!

  Annie was out of the door and taking the stairs in huge three and four step bounds. Thank God Pat was here first so she could explain what she’d done. ‘I didn’t know how long you’d be,’ she would say. ‘I had to call the police.’ She arrived on the street to see a large woman heave herself out from behind the wheel and on to the pavement.

  Was it Pat? No … yes … no … It looked like Pat but …

  No, definitely not Pat, because there was Pat, granite-faced in the passenger seat, pushing off the hands that tried to help her swing the plaster-cast round and on to the tarmac. Sunlight glinted off the roof of the car. Sweat glistened on the faces of the two women as they bickered their way out of the vehicle, wrestling with each other and bundles of bulging Sainsbury’s carrier bags. Annie watched a mime show as the stiff breeze from the estuary took their voices out of reach. The other woman had to be Pat’s sister, if not her twin, and was so intent on pressing unwanted help on Pat that Annie thought they were sure to fall into a squabbling heap on the roadside long before they reached her.

  They came near enough for Pat’s words to reach Annie, ‘And there’s no need to …’ just as Pat spotted her and stopped.

  ‘Annie?’ Pat frowned puzzled, then took a closer look and hobbled nearer. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  Annie had barely started a reply when the sound of another car spun her attention to the far end of the street. A police patrol car turned in and sped towards them.

  Both Pat and the Pat-clone at her side stared first at the patrol car then at Annie. ‘Are they here to see you?’ Pat said, reading the answer in Annie’s face.

  The other woman pursed her lips. ‘I knew it meant trouble. I told Vince we should get you a proper woman in, but—’ She stopped abruptly.

  Pat turned a triumphant glare on her. ‘I knew it! I knew you were in on it.’

  ‘Well, someone’s got to look out for you. You can’t look after yourself.’

  ‘Says who? Don’t answer that. Vince says. Well, when did you start taking notice of him?’

  ‘And that’s another thing. I called into the office. He’s changed the lock on Dad’s safe. I’m not at all happy with—’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you anymore, Babs. And if you’re so unhappy with him, why did you gang up against me?’

  ‘He was right about you needing someone in. He should have left it to me. Someone to cover the work, huh!’ The woman’s gaze raked Annie from head to toe. ‘Just look what she’s done and she’s only been here five minutes.’

  The woman looked across to where the police car had parked and now disgorged two uniformed officers, Jennifer and a dark-haired man.

  Annie’s mind grabbed at the disjointed information and pulled it together. Babs? So this was Barbara Caldwell who’d been a director of the firm and its original company secretary and who was clearly Pat’s sister.

  Pat turned to Annie. ‘Come on, you can play carer for thirty seconds and help me in. Let Babs deal with this lot.’

  In the time it took to help Pat inside, Annie gabbled out a swift explanation. It was barely coherent but Pat took it in her stride, only raising her eyebrows a little when Annie touched on the punch line to Terry Martin’s film. Behind them, Annie could hear Barbara greeting a clearly puzzled Jennifer and her colleague.

  ‘E Division, are you? I knew Sergeant Ready for years, you know.’ Barbara’s voice oozed geniality as though she were greeting guests at a formal event.

  ‘Jim Ready retired a while ago,’ Jennifer’s male colleague replied.

  ‘Oh yes, I know. He and his wife went off to Spain. Lovely little apartm
ent they have there. He was a good sort, didn’t you think so?’

  ‘Oh, I never knew him,’ said Jennifer.

  ‘Didn’t know Sergeant Ready. Good Lord, he’s a legend.’

  ‘PC Flanagan only joined the force a few weeks ago,’ her colleague pointed out.

  Annie had expected a police presence to bring some order to her turbulent thoughts, but their arrival was untidy. Barbara had loaded them with supermarket carriers and kept up her social chit-chat as she told them to ‘Just put them down there. I’ll see to them all now. You go and sit with Patricia and her assistant. I’ll make some tea.’

  Jennifer, maybe in an attempt to wrest control back from Barbara, leapt in with introductions. The man’s face remained serious as he nodded first to Annie, then to Pat. He’d have a nice smile, Annie thought, if he ever lost that grim expression. His name, she learnt, was PC Scott Kerridge.

  Pat took charge. ‘Sit down. I’ll just give you a bit of background before Annie shows you what she found.’ She outlined the Martins’ case.

  ‘So what is it you’ve found?’ Scott Kerridge said to Annie. ‘Evidence of a crime, a serious crime you told my colleague. Did the parents warn you about it?’

  ‘Oh no.’ Annie reached for the remote control. ‘No, they didn’t even know how to play the disk. I hope they never have to see it. It’d destroy them.’

  ‘And what’s the crime?’

  ‘I think it’s … well, I’m sure it’s murder.’

  She was aware that Jennifer’s eyes opened wide at her words. Scott Kerridge appeared unmoved and she felt his disbelief. Maybe her announcement lacked drama. Well, too bad. He’d see for himself in a moment.

  ‘Give us a brief summary, Annie,’ Pat said. ‘We don’t need to see it all. They can watch it when they take it away.’

  Swallowing a knot of apprehension, Annie clicked the machine in her hand and the waves of Spurn crashed into the room. ‘This is just … well nothing. Spurn Point.’ She fast forwarded, saw the concrete bunker flash past. ‘He did village shows and things.’ Giant onions jumped in and out of shot followed by jerky pictures of prize-winners.