Burying the Past

by Judith Cutler

  ‘It isn’t in the car, is it?’ he called, by way of greeting.

  She slung him her keys. ‘Check. I could have slung the Crown Jewels in there and never noticed.’ She paused long enough to give Dave a brilliant smile. ‘Hi again – I still can’t offer you a seat, I’m afraid.’ She pointed at Pargetter, carrying two kitchen chairs, stacked seat to seat. ‘You’re looking for a box marked KITCHEN.’ Her voice cracked ominously.

  He dug in the car; nothing doing. But he knew his Fran, and he emerged to shout, ‘What about the carrier bag with the kettle? Would that do?’

  ‘Uh, uh. And we need the bathroom box too – loo rolls and towels. And the scales,’ she added mock-threateningly.

  He’d have given anything for Dave to shrug off his jacket, roll up his sleeves and start rooting alongside Fran. Anything. But he stood coolly aside, watching them as if they were ideal jet-lag entertainment.

  Bent over a row of boxes, he asked, over his shoulder, as if it made it a casual, not a significant, question, ‘Where are you staying, Dave? With Sammie?’

  ‘The Hilton.’

  He hoped Fran had picked up the flatness of the three syllables. She was good on nuances.

  ‘I wish we could offer you a bed,’ he said truthfully. ‘But we’re staying in someone’s motor-caravan. And our new house is – well, both a building site and a crime scene. Take your pick. Neither conducive to comfort.’ He was talking too much – he could tell from Fran’s quick glance. ‘But we’d love to shout you dinner – at your hotel if you like.’ Except he felt as if he’d moved mountains, and Fran looked as if she had.

  ‘Perhaps that would be better than the Three Tuns,’ Fran said. Why the Three Tuns? He was horrified at how slowly he realized she must have suggested supper earlier. ‘We could meet you there,’ Fran continued. ‘We really need half an hour to settle ourselves in – hang up clothes and so on.’

  Dave tossed his head back as if he might have taken offence.

  ‘We’ve been up since before five, Dave,’ he said soothingly, ‘and I’m sure you could do with a nap after your flight.’

  ‘We have to pick up my car, remember – it’s still in your car park.’

  Shit. So it was. And if he knew Fran she’d have wanted their arrival at the rectory, even if it was to camp in a motor-caravan, to be something special. Whether he could carry her over the threshold . . . but he’d try, and she’d pretend. It would be important to her. Funnily enough, he didn’t want a third party around, either – and somehow he could trust Paula and Caffy to be tactfully out of sight.

  He inched over to Fran. ‘I’ll sort out Dave’s car and see you back here. OK? Then we can go in convoy.’ It was only a peck on the lips, but it would have to do.

  For some reason – was there a connection? – Dave seemed to have decided to grasp a couple of nettles, though Mark wasn’t at all sure that an edgy drive in Maidstone’s early rush hour was the moment to voice intimate and controversial matters. He knew he differed from Fran, who said she liked the impersonality of non-eye contact conversations. She seemed to pick up tonal nuances; as he got older, he relied far more on visual ones. Maybe Fran was right, and he should get his hearing checked. The ear drops she’d been assiduously applying each bed time – Caffy would have remembered, as he always did, the dumb show in Hamlet – hadn’t been noticeably successful.

  ‘So now you’re planning to marry this woman?’

  ‘Fran and I have always intended to marry,’ he said, fairly sure that this was the line Fran would already have taken. ‘It was just a matter of when and where.’

  ‘So what’s this Chief of Police got to do with it?’

  ‘Old Adam? Nothing. A joke between the three of us. The catalyst, if you want one, was a sudden realization of mortality as I stood at the top of our scaffolding.’ It wasn’t wholly true, but he thought the more prosaic truth might not work. ‘Fran’s always been a good friend: come on, surely you remember the times she babysat you. No? You always were a sound sleeper, Dave. And when your mother was ill, she took a huge amount of work off my shoulders so I could spend time with her. Precious time.’

  ‘In other words, the woman always had her eye on you.’

  Mark almost ran into the car in front. He took a deep breath. ‘Don’t make her out to be some predatory female, Dave. I’ve an idea my suggestion we have a date took her totally by surprise. Since then . . . Look, after your mother, I couldn’t have imagined anyone I’d want to share my life with. Now I can’t imagine spending it without Fran.’ Did he sound angry? Why not? He felt it. He’d almost have preferred a nudge-nudge, wink-wink approach from his son, though he wouldn’t have liked that either.

  The quality of the silence told him to say nothing more yet, but to wait for the reaction.

  ‘She’s a gold-digger.’

  ‘On the contrary, she’s brought more in cash to the relationship than I could.’ Why on earth was he offering such spurious information? Why hadn’t he made a simple flat denial?

  ‘Cash. With your salary?’ Perhaps he reflected on how his birthright had been spent, on his education and Sammie’s.

  ‘I wasn’t going to raise the matter, Dave, but since you have, I can tell you that we wouldn’t be able to afford our new marital home had she not sold that cottage of hers and stripped out her savings. So Fran is literally penniless at the moment. And until I can sell the Loose house, I can’t help out.’ Again, he stifled any further words, though they would have come tumbling out had he let them. But Dave said nothing, so he added what he should have said earlier: ‘And were Fran a beggar maid to my King Cophetua, she’d never be a gold-digger.’ He liked that sentence. Caffy would too.

  ‘So you’re saying this is all Sammie’s fault?’

  ‘Saying what? What’s Sammie’s fault?’ Perhaps he’d seriously misheard, because Dave’s question seemed to have come from nowhere.

  ‘This rushed marriage of yours. And if you had your house back, it’d be OK.’

  There was a tailback of people leaving the car park, but only him wanting to get in. He ID’d himself, the huge barrier admitted him, and he pulled into his marked space. He eased himself out of the car before he spoke. ‘Dave, I’ve not the slightest idea what you mean. I want to marry Fran because we want to spend the rest of our lives together. In our jobs, that might not mean very long. As far as the Loose house is concerned, I want access. It’s not just my property locked in there, remember. There’s a lot of Fran’s. And yours. It’s not Sammie’s house to occupy. When I die, it’ll be shared between you and Sammie.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to sell it.’

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t take things so literally. I need to sell it now. But you’ll have equal shares eventually.’

  ‘Uh, uh. She’ll have first claim.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Your new wife.’

  ‘I think we have such things as wills, Dave.’ In case Dave thought he was talking in philosophical terms, he added, ‘Bequests. You’ll be legatees. Now, let me take you through to your car. Will you remember the way to your hotel or would you like me to lead?’

  ‘Satnav.’ Suddenly, he sounded like the sulky boy who’d been made to tidy his room.

  ‘Very well. We’ll see you there in the bar at eight? Maybe a bit later? How’s the jet lag?’ Maybe everyday questions would take some of the poison from the air, he thought as he signed Dave out and walked through to the public car park. As he’d always done, he patted the top of the car in farewell and waved till Dave was out of sight. Dear God, what had gone wrong there? It’d need one of Janie’s miracles to get the family back together. Meanwhile, should he go back to his office for one last check? Then he thought of Fran, curiously forlorn and vulnerable amidst all those boxes, and he headed straight back to his own car.

  ‘Dear God! You call this a camper van?’ Arms akimbo, Mark stared at the vehicle occupying – parked in was too feeble an expression – their parking area.

  ‘Caffy’s word
, not mine.’ Fran staggered from her car and joined him, almost collapsing into his arms, but more, he thought, with pain and exhaustion than any amorous intent.

  But he kissed her all the same. ‘I’m sure there’s a proper literary term for understatement that Caffy would supply us with. How on earth did they get it down here?’ He smacked his head. ‘Of course, the traffic jam the other morning! It wasn’t some farm vehicle, it was this!’ Was it only yesterday? He blinked at their once gated entrance – now there were no gates and no stone supports. The stonework stood in neat stacks, against which the gates were propped. ‘Oh dear.’ He pointed at a couple of new additions to the site: an orange plastic boundary fence declaring that within was a hard-hat area, and listing all the site regulations, including boots, confronting familiar blue and white police tape indicating a crime scene. The fence and tape were millimetres apart, two frail armies squaring up to each other, knowing the big guns were in the rear and at the ready.

  ‘Silly cows,’ Fran declared, almost under her breath – rightly, since Paula and Caffy were no doubt lurking to watch their reaction. And to guard the huge Winnebago, the keys of which hung in the side door. She smiled at him. ‘We have to put on a show, Mark – they’ll be hoping you carry me across the threshold. Tell you what – you hold me and I’ll jump.’

  ‘So long as you keep your eyes shut – I want us to see the interior marvels at exactly the same time,’ he said ironically. It would be pop-star vulgar, wouldn’t it, a vehicular Elvis, all diamanté and fringes?

  Obediently, she put her hands over her eyes, waiting just inside until he was beside her, closing the door.

  ‘So we’re very lucky with the caravan,’ Fran, waiting for Mark to bring over their wine, told a coke-drinking Dave, glad to have someone to share it with. ‘It’s quite upmarket and pretty spacious.’ She lied, of course. It was extremely upmarket and very spacious, with a well-appointed mini-kitchen and a bijou shower-room; they could live in it without any problems as long as it took. Everything was top of the range, from fluffy towels and fine bedlinen to bone china, lead crystal and the sort of cooking pots she favoured, still mysteriously in their cardboard box in the self-store.

  Kindly, she attributed Dave’s total lack of interest in anything she might say to the zombie-like state induced by long-haul flights. Since she wasn’t far short of the same state herself, she could only manage chatter and banalities, but she remembered the way to a parent’s heart was usually his or her children, and she detected a slight softening of his chill when he showed her picture after picture of two all-American youngsters, their grins broad despite the ironmongery in their mouths. She asked about their grades and interests and everything an ex-babysitter and potential step-grandmother needed to know, even if she doubted if she registered half of what he was saying, since his accent seemed to have thickened and her brain most certainly had disintegrated into cotton wool some time during the day.

  In fact it must have done so pretty early on: she stopped herself clicking her fingers and tutting aloud when she recalled exactly what she should have been talking to the agreeable young man at the self-store about. He’d told her he’d be back on duty at eight next morning. Provided she ever woke from the slumbers she could rely on the superbly sprung double bed to provide, she’d arrive not long after.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Lost more boxes, have you, love?’ the young man – Ed – asked as she rolled up the next morning.

  ‘I’m searching for a bit more than a box,’ she said, fishing out her ID and wishing the sight of it hadn’t made him go visibly pale. ‘How long has this place been open?’

  ‘Years, miss. I mean, like, I’ve been here for three, but yonks before that. Why?’ he asked, eyeing her with a mixture of fear and hostility.

  ‘I’m looking for someone else’s boxes,’ she said, patting the ID and putting it back in her pocket.

  ‘You’d better talk to the boss, miss. Shouldn’t be long, now. Honest.’

  ‘No problem. I’ll go and have another look for my saucepans while I’m here.’ Not that she needed them, of course, but there was no point in further rattling poor Ed unless she had to.

  Tom, his boss, was so relaxed and expansive, pressing on her a plastic cup of truly evil coffee which reminded her why she was supposed to be sticking to green tea, that she immediately suspected him of something underhand. But he cooperated readily when she asked him about the firm’s rental records, producing a dog-eared set of computer printouts dating from the days of daisy-wheel printers. Living history! Licking his index finger each time he turned a page, he worked his way through what appeared to be scores, if not hundreds, of entries.

  ‘Thank God for proper computers,’ he said, sweating as a result of his exertions. ‘But even in them days we was thorough – see, we’ve got a record of everyone’s name, address, phone, and driving licence or passport number, just in case. Here’s the dates they dropped the stuff off, and here’s the dates of each visit after that until the contract ended.’ By now he was breathing stertorously. But, eventually, he had to confess he’d no record at all for a Dr or even a Miss Lovage some twelve to fifteen years ago. His face showed as much disappointment as she felt.

  ‘We chose this place because it was nearest,’ Fran mused. ‘Do you have other branches?’

  With a flourish, he produced a pile of flyers, listing locations in half a dozen towns in the south-east. Some he crossed out before she could even look at them as being too new for her requirements. But even as she thanked him for his help, she felt a frisson of disappointment that her own moment of detective work hadn’t pulled even a rather grey rabbit out of a mouldy hat. Worse, trawling through the other depots’ records was clearly going to be the task of the lowliest on Kim’s team.

  On the other hand, she had a meeting scheduled in Folkestone first thing, and her route could take her very close to Ashford and, on the way back, not all that far from Canterbury. Why not? Especially if she could phone ahead and bum a cup of tea from Janie.

  Mark cut the call politely, but he could have thrown the phone across the desk. How on earth could he have agreed to have lunch with Dave, when he had to be on the thirteen eighteen from Maidstone East for a London meeting involving the election of police commissioners? Eventually, he’d suggested a sandwich on the station, not great family PR, but the best he could do. Would such unpromising surroundings make for a more meaningful conversation than the others? Fran had toiled last night to establish some – any – point of contact, but he had a terrible fear that the harder she’d worked, the more Dave had withdrawn into himself. And none of them had mentioned Sammie.

  Would it make matters easier if he phoned Ms Rottweiler – damned if he could remember her real name! – and told her to back off? Or should he urge a speedy resolution, so that Dave would be there to pick up any pieces? But now wasn’t the moment to do either: he was being summoned to the Wren’s den again. No, it was the Wren’s nest, wasn’t it? For the first time in the day he laughed aloud.

  If ever a woman deserved a treat, Fran sighed as she headed north up Stone Street, it was she. Despite Tom’s assurances, the Ashford self-store, once she’d run it to earth, turned out to have come too recently on the scene to have been the place where Dr Lovage had left her belongings. But even such a short diversion had made her marginally late for the CID meeting in Folkestone, something she always found embarrassing. Her colleagues had heard plenty of rumours about Wren and were, unsurprisingly, either alarmed or surly. To try to reassure them that all would be well but that they should be prepared for difficulties required an ability to walk the tightrope of truth she wasn’t sure she wanted to possess. At least she left her colleagues believing that in her and in the ACC (Crime) – so long as such a post existed, of course – they had officers who would fight dangerous cuts with every fibre of their corporate bodies.

  Although she’d have loved to stride along the Leas for ten minutes to get a healing blast of sea air, she returned dutifully
to her car, even if her destination was less than appropriate for someone of her rank. She should absolutely be above such routine enquiries – but after the meeting she felt that she was honour bound to cock a snook at management, even if no one would ever know of her gesture.

  Janie laughed when she heard of Fran’s one-woman mutiny, but became serious as soon as their conversation touched on her protégée.

  ‘This Cynd business is really troubling me,’ she said, pushing over a plate of leaden flapjack Fran knew from experience would test every filling in her head. Somewhere Janie had got hold of the idea that anything with oats in it must be healthy, managing to ignore the Golden Syrup and butter that held the oats together. ‘You know more about street drugs than I do, but I’m wondering if she didn’t imagine the whole thing while she was away with the fairies.’

  Fran merely said, ‘The forensic tests will tell us more.’

  ‘Haven’t you had them already? On TV—’

  ‘On TV they don’t have vice-tight budgets,’ Fran said flatly. ‘But a bit of corroborating evidence would be nice – from CCTV or whatever other source. Even someone turning up in A and E with a hole in his side might have been helpful.’

  Janie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Take care what you wish for. Take me, now – I always wished I had smaller tits, and now I’m due a mastectomy. I might go for broke – have a double,’ she added with what might just pass for a grin.

  Fran cried out: Janie was supposed to be immortal! But this wasn’t about her own needs. So, as if she herself was the strong one, she reached for Janie and hugged her until she could feel her friend relaxing in her arms. At last Fran asked, ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘Wednesday night. Not news you’d want me to break in front of Cynd, now, was it?’

  Did Cynd know? But Fran wouldn’t interrupt her.

  ‘I go in first thing on Monday. As luck would have it, instead of popping into the Kent and Canterbury, I’ve got to pound across to the William Harvey. For seven, would you believe?’