Quick off the Mark

by Moody, Susan

  She jutted her chin. ‘He isn’t. I can assure you he isn’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because he’s not the violent sort. He just isn’t. You’ll have to trust me on this one, Alex.’

  ‘You have absolutely no proof.’

  ‘That’s right. Only my gut-instinct after living with him.’

  ‘It’s not good enough.’

  ‘It’ll have to do.’

  Dimsie looked and sounded just like her mother. I always found it disorientating when the Komodo Dragon revealed itself beneath her normal porcelain surface.

  Stand-off time. ‘Well,’ I said eventually. Feebly. ‘I may have to reconsider my position.’

  And left before she could apply any more of her particular brand of persuasion.

  Walking back to my flat along the seafront, warm breezes ruffled my hair. The air was pure, the water like glass. I might be some distance from London, without immediate access to galleries, museums, theatres, but I was also some distance from major pollution, noise, traffic, a capital city that was gradually losing its identity.

  Later, errands run, email answered, work over for the day, I poured myself a glass of red, heated the slice of homemade pizza I’d bought earlier from our very own Italian bakery, and for want of anything better to do, plus (having met the guy) a tad’s hair of curiosity, settled down on the sofa to dip once more into Chris Kearns’ book.

  I grew more and more impressed as I read on. He was a powerful and unflinching writer and I found myself in tears as he recounted the loss of his sixteen-year-old daughter, (named Eunice for the purposes of the autobiography, don’t ask me why), his wife’s descent into acute alcoholism and the difficult struggle the two of them went through to get her sober. He detailed with unsparing honesty the vomiting, the abuse both verbal and physical, the self-soiling, the rows, the relapses, the domestic destruction, the drunken rages. It was horrendous and, I’m almost ashamed to admit, gripping stuff.

  I could only thank whatever powers there be that I had not made a similar journey to the brink of hell. There had been many a lonely evening after Jack Martin had left, and I’d lost the child I was carrying, when I’d got outside most of a bottle of wine followed by a whisky or two.

  Common sense and a strong dislike of not being in control eventually took over. Forced me to take stock and realize how close I was to becoming dependent. That, plus the sight of my bleary puffy face in the mirror.

  The following morning, I rolled out of bed, cursing Dimsie. I really didn’t want to be driving halfway across south-east England on what could be nothing more than a wild goose chase. At least I would have a chance to visit with Clarissa and Mark Ridgeway – I had indeed already invited myself for lunch, prior to visiting Rollins Hall again.

  Clarissa was looking radiant. ‘I’m two-thirds of the way through my book,’ she enthused. ‘And Rondel is beginning to piece the puzzle together before nailing the villain.’

  ‘So will it be the hunchbacked chamberlain?’ I said. ‘Or his wicked squire?’

  ‘Neither, of course.’ She clasped my arm and smiled at me. ‘But far more important than that … I’m expecting. Again!’

  ‘Fantastic! Congratulations to you both.’

  She lifted an apologetic hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, Alex. I’m so sorry. I forgot.’

  ‘Just because I had a miscarriage doesn’t mean nobody else is ever allowed to have a baby.’

  ‘No, but … I don’t need to flaunt my fecundity.’

  ‘You’re not. At least, not yet. And I’m truly delighted.’ My body ached. Would I ever be pregnant again? Sometimes my longing for a normal family life was almost overwhelming. And, as I often reminded myself, the tick-tock of my internal rhythms was getting louder, sounding through my dreams like the call of a bugle.

  Over lunch I asked if there had been news from Rollins Park. ‘I believe Lady Paramore’s father had to return to the States,’ Mark said. ‘And there’ve been more visits from the RSPCA, re those Tennessee Walking Horses.’

  ‘In fact,’ said Clarissa, ‘I think I read in the local paper that they’re planning to put the whole rodeo show on hold for the moment. At least until Hank Rogers gets back.’

  ‘I wonder if they’ll put something else on instead.’

  ‘If so, what?’

  ‘An historical pageant or something.’

  ‘Actually …’ Clarissa smirked a bit. ‘Ackshully, they’ve already talked to me about producing a script. For instance, at least one of their ancestors was beheaded.’

  ‘Cue Tudor or Stuart with his head tucked underneath his arm,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly. The kids would love that. And there was also someone back in the eighteenth century who was accused of witchcraft, and someone else burned at the stake …’

  ‘Not exactly wholesome family entertainment,’ I said.

  ‘We’d have to skirt over that a bit. Plus there’re masses of gorgeous authentic costumes stowed away in the attics, longing for a twenty-first-century airing. It could be a winner.’

  I kind of hoped that Todd DuBois, aka Jerry Baskin, was still hanging around. I’d like to get down and dirty with him, push him a bit, find out what exactly he was doing here, what his unfinished business was, or had been. I already knew he was eel-like in his ability to slither away from any direct questions, but if I came across him, this time I’d do my damnedest to pin him down.

  When I arrived at Rollins Park, I turned in at the gates and, ignoring the private road leading to the house, headed directly for the designated parking for visitors, which was already half-full of cars. As I walked towards the showground, I could hear distant cheers and a ‘Yee-haw!’ or two, which would indicate that the rodeo had not yet been put on ice. Great! The chances of catching up with Jerry Baskin were looking good.

  But he didn’t seem to be performing that morning. Perhaps it was his day off. When the final lariat had been twirled, and the last cowboy had ridden off the ground, the last family group had dropped its ice-cream wrappers and paper cups on the floor, the way a dog might pee against a lamp post to indicate it had passed that way, I stepped down the bleachers and made my way across the sanded showground to the Western-style log houses at the far side. I could hear voices, a shower running, someone singing ‘Streets of Laredo’, the clink of an empty beer can being tossed at a waste bin and landing on the concrete floor instead.

  I rapped at the door, and heard the place go quiet. Someone approached and lifted the latch. A good-looking hombre in a towel and a Western hat stood there. Tats snaked down his arms. An inked spider lurked on his neck, just below his left ear.

  ‘Well, hi there,’ he said. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘I was looking for Jerry Baskin,’ I said. There was a belch, a guffaw, a voice saying, sotto voce, ‘Aren’t they all?’

  ‘Baskin took off,’ Tattoo Man said.

  ‘Where did he go?’

  He shrugged, nearly dislodging the towel and offering an unwelcome glimpse of a shiny pink testicle. ‘Who the fuck knows?’

  ‘Who the fuck cares?’ came the voice in the background. There was a prolonged burp.

  I was getting the impression that Jerry Baskin hadn’t been the most popular man in the show. ‘When did he leave?’

  ‘About eight days ago now.’

  ‘Without leaving a forwarding address, I should imagine,’ I said. ‘Why’d he leave?’

  Tattoo Man stood back from the door. ‘Hey, why don’t you come on in, set for a while?’

  ‘Thank you.’ I stepped into an almost visible reek of sweat, stale beer, damp towels and aftershave. Fringed suede jackets hung from pegs, spurred cowboy boots lay untidily around on the floor. More pegs held twines of rope, leather chaps, a couple of western saddles. Beneath the pegs were benches set all round the walls, rather like changing rooms at football or rugby stadia.

  ‘It was more like nearly a couple of weeks ago that Baskin vamoosed.’ Another semi-naked guy – the Greek chorus, I assume
d – showed up and smiled an all-American smile. He lifted a hand to his wet hair in a sort of salute. ‘Howdy, ma’am.’

  I nodded. Neither of them was the Marvin or Chuck I’d been introduced to on my last visit here.

  ‘So what do you want with Brother Baskin?’ one of them asked.

  ‘I’m not a wronged girlfriend, if that’s what you’re wondering,’ I said. ‘Just wanted to ask him a few questions. Perhaps you could help.’

  ‘What sort of questions?’

  ‘For a start, where did he come from?’

  They looked at each other. ‘Well, now,’ one of them said. ‘Depends who he was talking to.’

  ‘That’s right. Never knew where he was from. He’d tell you something one day, and the next you’d hear him say the exact opposite to someone else.’

  ‘Yup. And if you took him up on it, he’d either say you must’ve misheard him, or he’d flat out deny it.’

  ‘So basically, you haven’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘You got it. He just showed up here one day, looking for work, and Hank took him on.’

  ‘Have to say he certainly seemed to know his way round horses and rodeo.’

  One of them reached for a can of beer, dragged at the ring-pull which he tossed over his shoulder, and offered it to me. ‘Thanks but no thanks,’ I said. ‘Where are you guys from?’

  ‘I’m from Louisville, Kentucky.’

  ‘Gainesville, Florida.’

  ‘And despite the whoppers, where would you say the so-called Jerry Baskin actually came from?’

  ‘So-called … you spotted that too, did you?’ He held out his land. ‘I’m Luke, by the way. And he’s Duke.’

  ‘You’d have to be blind and deaf to miss it,’ I said. ‘Even if you’d never bought a tub of ice cream from the supermarket.’

  The two of them fell about. ‘Ben & Jerry’s!’ they chortled. ‘Baskin Robbins!’

  ‘So if you had to choose a home state for him, what would you opt for?’

  They looked at each other and shrugged. ‘Ask me, I’d say probably California.’

  ‘Definitely from the States,’ agreed his friend, ‘but I wouldn’t be able to say where.’

  ‘But not from a plantation in Louisiana?’

  Both of them laughed again. ‘Louisiana … fuckin’ A,’ said one.

  ‘He was good, I’ll give him that,’ said the other.

  ‘Darkies crooning the blues, Ol’ Man River …’

  ‘All that crap.’

  ‘But you only had to spend, like, half an hour with him to see he was a real three dollar bill.’ Duke cracked open another beer.

  ‘Easy enough dude to get on with, under all the sweet talking, but I wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw him.’

  ‘Him nor his Lord and Ladyship, ask me.’ Duke nodded wisely. I couldn’t help wishing the towel round his waist was larger. Or his balls were smaller.

  ‘Not to mention old Hanky Panky.’

  I made my eyes round. ‘What?’

  ‘Plus that decorator guy – Christian or whatever.’

  ‘Tristan? You think he was involved too?’

  The guys nodded at each other. ‘Matter of fact, I’d guess the Tristan guy was the big cheese.’

  ‘Are you saying you think the Paramores are crooks?’

  ‘All of them’re in it up to the neck.’

  ‘Wow!’ I said. ‘And what do you reckon “it” is?’

  ‘We thought drugs, at first, didn’t we, Duke?’

  ‘Sure did. It’s the obvious thing. But then we caught on to the fact they was always going off with them big horse boxes without any particular reason—’

  ‘Not races, or them point-to-points you have over here, or attending other rodeos—’

  ‘They’d have needed us for that.’

  ‘Right. So we reckon they’s dealing in maybe horses, or stolen autos, something biggish like that.’

  ‘Even wondered about people trafficking, girls and stuff. Pick ’em up at Southampton or wherever, drive ’em up to the big city, sell the poor gals on.’ Duke spat into the litter of straw which wisped about the floor.

  ‘Lotta money to be made out of hookers,’ Luke informed me. ‘East Europeans and like that. Not saying I approve, natch.’

  ‘Quite the opposite.’

  ‘But you’ve never seen anything suspicious?’

  ‘What, like chicks screaming for help in a barn or something? Definitely not.’

  ‘On the other hand …’ The other guy’s face grew sombre. ‘Now I think about it, they’s been a helluva lotta cars coming in through the back way recently.’

  ‘Where’s the back way?’ I asked keenly.

  He indicated the landscape behind us.

  ‘What’s there?’

  ‘Oh, you know … the usual shit. Barns and sheds and outbuildings, like that.’

  I hoped the implication wasn’t that the Paramores were running a brothel of some kind in the grounds of Rollins Park. ‘Can I access the back way from the … uh … back?’

  ‘Sure can, ma’am. They’s a road …’

  ‘Wanna know something?’ said Luke. ‘I’m about ready to split, know what I mean? This place is beginning to seriously gross me out.’

  ‘You ’n me both, dude.’

  ‘Any reason in particular?’ I asked.

  The two of them laughed. ‘Where to start, man.’

  ‘Supposed to be these high-class dudes. Ask me, they’s nothing but a bunch of weirdos.’

  ‘Crooks, too.’

  Somewhere nearby a horse gave a high-pitched long-drawn-out whinny. Harness jangled. I could hear childrens’ voices. Must be getting on for show time. The second house.

  ‘I’d better leave you two to get ready for the next performance.’ I stood up.

  ‘Look, don’t know if it’s any help …’ Duke said, ‘… but if you’re really trying to track down this Baskin guy, I know he had connections somewhere near Canterbury. Heard him on his cell phone several times.’

  ‘How would you know where he was phoning?’

  ‘I asked him. As in, “Who the hell you calling, dude?” Said it was some woman he knew, someone from the good old days.’

  ‘Ah … the good old days,’ repeated Luke. ‘I often wonder what they was.’

  ‘Or when.’

  ‘Thank you for that,’ I said. ‘And for the other info. You’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘You gonna have a word with his or her Lordship? ’Cause if so, watch your back.’

  ‘They’ve both got tempers on ’em that would frighten an alligator out of its skin.’

  This shed further light on the Paramores. ‘I’ll be careful.’

  Though as I walked towards my car, I felt as though I had a boxful of jigsaw pieces. All I had to do now was fit them together. It was a pity there was no helpful picture on the lid.

  How exactly was I going to tackle the Paramores? I didn’t have any kind of relevant lead-in. On the other hand, I was right here, on the premises, as it were, and it would be daft not to take the opportunity to talk to them again. Which I would do. Definitely. Just as soon as I had worked out an opening sentence. And another to follow it. Couldn’t be all that difficult, could it?

  EIGHTEEN

  I’m not a big fan of hunches and intuitions, either in real life or in crime fiction. In my opinion, those moronic girls beloved of Women In Jeopardy writers, who pursue baddies into draughty cellars with only a guttering candle for illumination, deserve everything they get. Solid facts, hard evidence, irrefutable proof: those are the verifications I operate by in my art anthologies, and the same goes for the kind of amateur detection I’ve recently found myself embroiled in. Not that I’m not reasonably sensitive to atmosphere. And boy, was there a lot of that flying round the Paramore residence!

  I didn’t have to be psychic to realize that since my last visit, the domestic situation had changed very much for the worse. Waiting for Piper or her husband, to join me in the small
sitting room into which I’d been shown, I was chilled by a feeling that things were falling apart, the centre was having a hard time holding. It wasn’t so much the particularly English shabbiness of the room – faded chair covers, sagging curtains, threadbare rugs, smelly spaniels (although I’d previously been given to understand that Piper had spent a fortune doing the place up) – it was also a pervading impression of just-slammed doors, chilly hatred, plates thrown in a rage, angry voices speaking through gritted teeth just out of earshot. Family photos stood about, mostly of Sir Piers in various pugilistic poses, holding a gun or an archery bow or even stripped to the waist in boxing gloves and satin shorts.

  So unpleasant, even menacing, did the house feel, that if the housekeeper person who’d parked me in the room had reappeared to report that unfortunately she had found one (or even both) of the Paramores in the Blue Drawing Room or the Yellow Parlour or wherever, with a knife through the heart or a bullet to the head, I don’t think I would have turned a hair. After all, it would have been part and parcel of what was already a violent family history – the ancestress drowned as a witch, the forebear beheaded on Tower Green, the pregnant parlourmaid turned away after being raped by the son of the house, the vengeful uncle stabbing his brother for a swindled inheritance. Like Clarissa Ridgeway, I’d done some research on the Paramores and knew that was just for openers.

  However, nothing as dramatic as that took place. Piper showed up looking business-like, wearing a padded hunting-green gilet over a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and greeted me with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. She seemed strained and pale, much thinner than at our last encounter. Her Eton crop had lost its vitality. There were deep vertical lines between her eyebrows which I didn’t remember seeing on my former visit.

  She shook my hand briskly. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘I don’t know if you can. Basically, I’m still checking out various aspects of Tristan Huber’s death.’

  At the sound of his name, she flinched as though someone had just stuck a red-hot fork into the back of her hand. Her fingers toyed nervously with the antique gold locket round her throat. She recovered enough to raise patronizing eyebrows. ‘As far as we’re concerned, nothing new has occurred since we last met,’ she said.