by Penny Grubb
‘I so don’t, do I, Kay? I so don’t, Annie. It’s Mally who always—’
‘You do sometimes. If you’d let Mally take Boxer—’
Kay stopped abruptly. Fierce glances were exchanged. Laura muttered, ‘It’s so not fair. You’re a blackguard, Mally!’
‘And you’re a liar, Laura Tunbridge. You couldn’t suss your way out of a paper bag.’
Annie took a few steps away from the simmering group and leant against the rickety gate. ‘Some grown-up behaviour from all of you wouldn’t be a bad idea considering what you just found.’
‘You haven’t sussed what we found.’
‘OK, surprise me.’
The three girls looked at each other and it was Kay who spoke. ‘We’ve found the body.’
Annie heard an edge of panic in Kay’s tone as the memory came back to her. How much worse must it have been in the flesh … in the rotting flesh? All three were jumpy, it was why they sniped at each other. She must take this carefully, bear in mind what was and wasn’t officially in the public domain.
‘What body?’
‘The one the police were looking for, stupid. You must have heard about it. We had it sussed straight away.’
‘No, I haven’t heard anything about a body. Tell me.’
With the big secret spilt, all three clamoured to be the one to pass on what they knew. Annie listened, sifting the core information from three simultaneous accounts. Pat had guessed it practically to the letter except that the detectives in charge hadn’t been as ham-fisted as she’d implied. The leak about their interest in cellars wasn’t a result of heavy-handed enquiries.
‘The police got all the plans of Milesthorpe to find out who’s got a cellar.’
‘Where did they get the plans?’
‘From the council. And Kay’s sister’s friend works for them at—’
Annie pretended not to notice the back-heel from Mally that shut Laura up with a gasp. Before things could dissolve into another fight, she said, ‘How did you know which cellar to look in?’
‘Oh, that was easy.’ Mally said. ‘The police kept asking about Mr Balham and if he knew Terry, so, of course, we sussed it all out at once. And now we’ve sussed where Terry put his body.’
But the police had searched Balham’s. And anyway, Jennifer said there was no cellar. Annie chose her words with care. ‘There’s a cellar at Mr Balham’s, is there?’
‘No, course not. Haven’t you sussed it yet? It took us about one minute.’
‘That’s so not fair, Mally. Annie doesn’t know Mr Balham. She’s from London.’
Christ! This village grapevine was something else.
A replay of a comment from thirty seconds ago – we’ve sussed where Terry put his body. Hope rose in a wave. The girls had smelt the corpse, she knew, but maybe they’d been spared the sight. His body. Not her body. If they’d seen it, they would know. The clothes at least wouldn’t have rotted that far yet.
‘Come on. You need to tell me where.’ And come on, Jennifer. Check your voicemail.
‘We’ll show you. You’d never suss it on your own. Take us in your car. It’ll take about twenty minutes.’
‘How can it take twenty minutes? You got here on foot in less.’
‘We’re so not going back on foot. It’ll be dark soon. I’m so not going anywhere near that place in the dark.’
‘OK, OK.’ Annie ushered them towards the car. ‘I’ll drive you, that’s not a problem. I’m just saying that if we go the way you came, it’ll be quicker than twenty minutes.’
‘You can’t do the cliff path in a car. We’ll have to do the long way by road.’
*
Annie felt a need to move fast and hustled the girls into Pat’s car. Mally sat in front with her and gave the badly timed directions of someone who’d never driven. Twice she had to stop and back the car up as Mally’s ‘Turn down there’, came a fraction too late.
When Mally said, ‘Just stay on this road now for ages. I’ll tell you where to stop,’ Annie put her foot down, to try to get some speed out of the car. Almost at once, her foot slammed back on the brake as the road disappeared in front of her. The car bounced alarmingly as the wheels strayed into grassy ruts. For a second she thought it would flip right over but it found the cracked tarmac surface again and righted itself.
Her heart pounded. The girls didn’t seem to notice anything wrong. Mally, the non-driver, hadn’t thought to mention hairpin bends. Annie forced in a deep breath. She thought of the corpse Terry Martin had filmed. Whoever the woman was, haste was no use to her now.
She concentrated to pick out the idiosyncrasies of the road ahead and modified her speed to match what she could see. The road, close to single track to start with, narrowed further, its edges ill-defined in jagged holes where heavy farm vehicles and lack of maintenance had frayed the edges of the tarmac ribbon.
After what felt like miles, Mally said, ‘You need to stop along here. There’s a flat bit where the gate used to be.’
Annie took a glance at the clock. Eighteen minutes. The girls’ estimate hadn’t been far out. It was hard to judge the twists and turns but they seemed to have driven a huge loop out of Milesthorpe and back again.
The background hiss of the sea rushing the beach far below and the crash of waves breaking, grew in volume as the four of them made their way over the uneven ground to the cliff’s edge. Remnants of daylight picked out the rising moon and waves far out to sea. Annie screwed up her eyes against the rush of the wind that must blow continuously up here. She recognized the background sounds to Laura’s call. Not a storm after all, just a quirk of landfall that kept a constant squall blowing. Then a form began to define itself ahead. A low black shape, angular and at odds with the landscape.
‘What is it?’ Annie couldn’t help keeping her voice down not to disturb the ghosts she knew were nearby.
‘It’s the shed where Mr Balham kept his sheep when this was a real field.’
A shed? Terry Martin hadn’t been inside a shed. Then she came close enough to see that the so-called shed was some kind of wartime relic. It had once been a substantial building, but it sat low, nestled into the ground. No windows. No difficulty to imagine the inside. Dark, damp … a cellar in all but name. It stood about fifty metres from the cliff top. In the war it must have been much further back. Some manner of command post maybe.
Annie stopped. The girls were behind her. They hung back now. This was as close as they wanted to be.
All doubts gone, Annie couldn’t stop the question, ‘Did you go inside?’
‘It’s locked. Mr Balham always keeps it locked. We had that sussed years ago.’
‘And anyway, Maz— Ow!’
‘Shut up!’
Annie looked sharply across as she glimpsed Mally’s foot shoot out to deal Laura a swift kick on the ankle. Mally glared. Laura’s lip trembled.
‘But we didn’t need to go in,’ Kay cut across the byplay. ‘It’s awful. You know as soon as you get inside the first bit.’
‘I’m so not going back in.’
‘I didn’t say you had to. But she can if she wants.’ Mally pointed at Annie. ‘If she doesn’t believe us.’
‘I believe you.’
Visions leapt in front of Annie before she could fight them back. The blackened tongue … the remains of an eye … the glimpse of a ligature bitten tight … She stared towards the low building watching it shimmer and fade into the dusk. What would they say when Balham turned up in the village? And what when he was arrested? Would the woman who lay inside turn out to be someone else they knew?
She jumped at a sudden noise. It was the ring of her phone. At last! Jennifer.
The voice in her ear crackled indistinctly. Bad signal or low charge. It didn’t matter. She was able to give Jennifer a concise account, and felt the weight of responsibility lift as she spoke. The girls stopped talking to listen. Laura’s mouth hung open, but relief lit her eyes. Mally glowered, clearly resentful that Annie had outflanke
d her.
Nothing to do now but wait for the cavalry to arrive.
The scene flipped from sinister calm with only the wind and the sea as spectators to cars and shouting, high-viz jackets and powerful beams of light. Annie stood at the periphery and barely felt a part of it. Where she’d been the star player, she’d become invisible. From out of the fast-approaching night grown-ups had swooped to cluster round the three girls. Annie felt a pang of sadness that there was no one to comfort her. She recognized the police constable who’d been in the car with Scott Kerridge at the Martins. Jennifer appeared too, her movements purposeful. Everyone seemed to have a role. They all knew what to do.
‘You OK?’
A light touch on her arm. Annie looked up into the face of Scott Kerridge, his expression concerned, kind. ‘Yes … thanks.’ She felt gratitude that he’d thought to ask.
‘Get that light fixed!’ someone shouted.
Her eye was drawn to the vehicles that flashed alternately bright-mute creating a pulsing blue circle centred on the narrow road. When she looked back, Scott was gone.
‘Uh … Miss Raymond?’
Annie turned again and looked into the precise and rather long face of the man whose resemblance to Laura made introductions unnecessary.
‘We’re taking Laura home now. We were going to drop Melissa off too, but she says you’ve promised her a lift back to her grandfather’s.’
‘Yes, I can do that,’ she said, taken aback.
Laura’s father shook his head. ‘She hadn’t asked you, had she? But if you don’t mind taking her, we’d be grateful. She’s a bit of a wild young thing and her mother’s away at the moment. I’m afraid she’s been over-indulged since her parents divorced. She’s Colonel Ludgrove’s granddaughter. Do you know his house?’
‘Yes … yes, I know where he lives.’ Ludgrove, of course, was one of the names on her mental map of Milesthorpe, the friend Tremlow contacted when he found Terry Martin’s body.
‘I’m going to ring him and tell him that you’re bringing her home. I’ll explain who you are. I’m afraid he puts too much trust in young Melissa’s word about where she’s going or who she’s with.’
He spoke into his phone as they picked their way across the grass to join the others.
Annie saw anger flare in Mally’s eyes as Laura’s father told her what he’d done. Clearly Mally had intended to give them all the slip and go off by herself. But where? Surely she wouldn’t want to make her own way back to the village after all this, even if there were a quick route along the cliff path. It was almost completely dark now.
Annie waited until they were alone in Pat’s car and had set off back towards the village. ‘So how would you have got home if I hadn’t given you a lift?’
‘Gone with Kay,’ Mally snapped.
Annie noted the reference to Kay and not Laura, the latter being out of favour probably for having pushy parents.
‘Yeah, but you told Laura’s Dad you were coming back with me.’
‘I am, aren’t I?’
Annie glanced across. Any doubts she’d had about Mally knowing the joy-riders dissolved as she looked at the girl. Mally never intended to make her way back alone from the cliff top. She had a phone and a juicy story to tempt her unruly mates with their fast cars out from Hull. That was the plan Annie and Laura’s father thwarted between them. They completed the journey in silence until Annie slowed to turn into the road where Ludgrove lived.
‘You can drop me here,’ Mally said. ‘It’s just up the road.’
Annie drove to the gate. ‘I’ll walk with you to the door.’
‘I’m not a fucking kid, you know! I can suss my way up a fucking drive!’
Annie ignored the profanities put on for her benefit and saw that even if Mally had planned a last-minute getaway, she’d have been stopped. An elderly man leaning heavily on a stick hobbled down the driveway to meet them.
‘Thought I saw a car,’ he greeted them.
‘Can I use the net, Grandad? I want to e-mail Kay.’ Mally’s voice was full of bounce, no trace of the strop she’d been in a moment ago. She didn’t wait for an answer but skipped past her grandfather and into the house.
‘So you’re the private detective they’re all talking about?’ The old man leant awkwardly on his stick so he could free a hand to offer Annie. ‘Do come in.’ He turned with difficulty and made heavy work of the climb up the three steps to the front door.
Reluctantly, Annie followed. She’d be pushing it to get back to Orchard Park and didn’t want to delay any longer. She listened to Mally’s grandfather’s laboured breathing. E-mail to Kay? Annie didn’t think so. Mally would be on to her joy-riding mates to embroider the story of the body. Would they race out here with their tatty car and blaring music to make trouble? Part of her felt she shouldn’t leave this vulnerable old man at Mally’s mercy. Another part felt a reluctance to cross this threshold because it led to a side of Terry Martin’s story she didn’t want to know. But she could spare a few minutes. Long enough to make arrangements to come back in daylight and talk to Colonel Ludgrove about the night Terry Martin died.
‘Do you get much trouble with joy-riders out here?’ she asked, as they entered the house.
The journey back to Hull became paradoxically brighter as the night grew darker. Country lanes, no more than narrow strips of tarmac through jungles of thick vegetation, wound their way into broader highways with road markings and streetlights. The direct route from Milesthorpe to the city led her back an unfamiliar way where neon signs and all-night garages created pools of activity in an otherwise sleeping town.
So much for the leisurely and measured introduction to the village that she’d planned, the careful cruising round the streets to locate and imprint on her mind all the addresses she’d memorized. Her mental map of the place had been flat, dotted with the square boxes that were the homes of the people she’d identified. Now she’d seen one of them, Colonel Ludgrove’s; been inside even. It was a real house with a driveway and gardens, not so much square as rambling. On her way out of the village she’d passed a couple of large, old-fashioned houses tucked away across the fields, their lights showing big doors and fancy stonework. And the village itself spread far further than she’d imagined and partly sat up on the crest of a gentle hill. East Yorkshire wasn’t a flat expanse. Its horizons were a long way off but the land undulated in a way that hid whole communities, and heaven knew what else. For at least a couple of weeks it had hidden the remains of a murdered woman.
Annie felt sick at the thought of it. A woman who’d met her end in a broken down building at the cliff’s edge now had white-suited scenes of crime officers and the medical men who dealt in death poring over her rotting remains.
It was too late to go back to Pat’s and swap the car for a taxi, but not too late for a drive round to Mrs Earle’s to see what went on outside the flats in the small hours. As she headed for Orchard Park she reflected that her destination was probably the home territory of the joy-riders Mally knew.
‘Joy-riders!’ Colonel Ludgrove had thundered in response to her question giving a glimpse of the military authority he’d once held. ‘Vandals! Hooligans! Don’t give them fancy names. Call a spade a spade.’
Yes, he told her, the village had been plagued for some time with gangs from Hull racing their cars through the streets, drawing in the local youth.
‘It must be a worry with your granddaughter to look after?’
‘Oh, I’ve no worries on that score. She’s a good girl, young Mel. Credit to the family name. Knows how to look after herself. Chip off the old block.’
‘Will her mother be away for long?’
‘No, no. Back any day now.’
Annie felt desperately sorry for him. Once a leader of men whose word was law, now helpless in the face of his own granddaughter. She imagined them together, he trying to instil in Mally all his old values; her listening with a false smile to curry favour and for as long as her boredom threshold held.
The approach to Mrs Earle’s block might be the other side of the world for the contrast it offered to the lanes of Milesthorpe. No lush vegetation, just wide areas of dusty stunted grass subservient to the concrete roads and dwellings. She eased the car over the speed bumps resisting the urge to copy the joy-riders and snake round them.
She pulled into the car-park of the tower block away from the direct beam of a streetlight and settled down to wait. The clock showed five minutes to two.
For a long time there was nothing to see. Sirens whined in the distance, some came close enough that she expected blue flashing lights within sight, but none appeared. A couple strolled up to one of the maisonettes opposite and made play of letting themselves in quietly. She watched the house after the door closed, saw lights go on and off, a silhouette as someone drew the curtains together at an upstairs window. A couple returning late, keeping the noise down. Nothing surreptitious, just good-neighbourliness; at odds with her image of the neighbourhood.
Her phone rang. Annie glanced at the screen and paused. The last time she’d answered an unfamiliar number it had been Laura Tunbridge hysterical at the top of the cliff.
‘Jed’s Private Investigations. Annie Raymond speaking.’
‘Hi, Annie. This is Scott Kerridge. I hope I haven’t got you out of bed.’
Scott? She made herself hide her surprise. He must have got her number from Jennifer. ‘No, I’m still working. This isn’t a nine to five number, you know.’
He laughed. ‘Look, I won’t keep you if you’re working, but I wanted to say thank you for tonight. You did a brilliant job with those kids. It was all too busy for anyone to have a proper word.’
‘Oh, well … thanks for the thought. I suppose it was the right place? I mean it wasn’t just a dead sheep or something?’
‘It was the place he filmed all right.’
‘And was it…? Was there just one body in there?’
‘Just the one. Just like on the film.’
‘Do you know who she is … was?’
‘Too early to say for sure. We’re trying to play it down if we can until we get a positive ID.’
