by Rob Campbell
“Said he needed to tell me something about my dad, something that I needed to know.”
“Sounds ominous,” I said, forcing out a fake laugh. “Where are you meeting him?”
“Here.”
“What, now?”
“No, at ten. I haven’t been here for a while. Just wanted to get a feel for the place again.”
“There’s nothing like arriving early,” I joked.
“It’s freezing out here,” Monkey said, changing the subject. “I wish the Beanfeast was open.”
“Well, you wanted to come here. Let’s go for a walk – it’ll warm us up.”
We left the frog fountain behind, walking up the path that ran alongside the duck pond, kicking aside dry leaves that had accumulated at the foot of the safety barrier that formed the pond’s perimeter.
“There’s always Dylan,” I said.
“Come again?” Monkey replied in confusion.
“I said there’s always Dylan.”
“I know what you said. I don’t understand what you mean.”
We hadn’t seen Dylan since his revelation about snake tattoos. So much had happened since then.
“Remember what he said just before he told us about the Wardens and their snake tattoos? He said something like at some point, we were going to have to choose sides – him or Lester,” I explained.
Monkey nodded slowly as if considering the implications. “And you think we should choose Dylan?”
We’d had a bit of luck recently. Specifically, in tracking down the clues to the location of The Truth, which just happened to be in an abandoned mansion in our home town. “We’re unlucky that Lester has fallen to pieces because of that cow, Victoria,” I continued. “And I don’t think we can rely on the Reverend for any guidance in his current state.”
“What about Frank?”
“I love Frank, but we can’t get him involved whilst keeping Lester out of the picture.”
“What makes you think Dylan can help us? Isn’t he going to be angry that we didn’t tell him about the painting sooner?”
I hadn’t thought of that. Well, not for the last few days anyway. “Good point,” I conceded. “But the way I see it, we’ve learned just about everything that Lester can tell us. He’s hardly been forthcoming with any new nuggets of info in the past few months. Plus, locking The Frenchman away and not doing anything with it didn’t turn out too well, did it?”
“True,” Monkey agreed.
The silence was shattered by the abrupt sound of raised voices coming from outside the apartments that bordered the park. We walked over to the hedge, peering over to see what was going on. To my astonishment, Victoria Halfpenny was in a heated discussion with an older man as they walked briskly towards a parked car.
“Hey! Victoria!” I shouted angrily, running for the park gates, Monkey close behind.
She turned to look my way as she held the passenger door open, and it was then that I noticed the briefcase in her left hand.
I increased my pace, closing on the car, but when I was still a good ten metres away, she broke out into a smile before treating me to a mocking wave. The man in the driver’s seat started the engine and called for her to get in. She climbed into the car, and for the second time in less than twelve hours, we watched her make her escape, tyres screeching as the silver car sped away.
“I don’t believe it!” Monkey shouted. “What was all that about?”
I ignored his question, my brain still playing catch-up. Was that Gooch’s briefcase that she’d been holding? I looked at the apartments that towered above us like stone giants. Of course, it made sense now.
“Gooch!” I said finally.
Monkey looked up and down the street. “Where?”
“Two hundred and twelve, Cherry Tree Gardens,” I said, pointing across the road at the metallic plaque that was fixed to the brickwork of the apartments.
“Oh yeah,” said Monkey. “When we were at Lester’s data centre, and he traced the call between Ramón and Gooch!”
“Think it’s a coincidence that we’ve just seen Victoria near Gooch’s apartment?”
* * *
We climbed the stairs to the second floor of Cherry Tree Gardens and followed the signs that pointed the way to apartments two hundred to two-sixteen.
“Are you sure we want to do this?” Monkey asked.
“I want to see why my teacher was so keen to make a hasty exit this early on a Sunday morning.” The fact that I continued to move down the corridor should have been answer enough.
Monkey grabbed my arm, halting my progress. “You said that you think Gooch might have killed Ramón,” he reminded me, fear in his eyes. “We need to be careful.”
“We’ll be careful. There’s two of us, and he’s an old man.”
“Didn’t help Ramón.”
“It’s just another thing we need to know. I’m not going to be scared anymore.”
He seemed to take confidence from my attitude, and we continued to creep down the harshly lit corridor. As we approached apartment 212, something looked wrong with the door. It stood open, the area around the lock splintered as if somebody had made a forced entry.
“Victoria,” Monkey said.
“Probably. Maybe Gooch isn’t here.”
“He’s going to be pretty angry when he finds out she’s taken his briefcase.”
I nodded at Monkey, hesitating outside the ruptured portal. Funny how we’d managed to break into the mansion to steal The Truth with relative ease, yet standing here outside an open door, I felt reluctant to enter the apartment. Charles Gooch could probably spook a ghost, so it shouldn’t have surprised me that some sixth sense told me not to enter. Of course, in my quest for answers, I didn’t usually take long to override my innate caution, never mind a sixth sense.
I was about to push the door open when Monkey stopped me.
“Push it with your feet. We don’t want to leave any fingerprints,” he explained, once again exhibiting a curious level of knowledge in the art of snooping around other people’s houses.
I nudged my foot against the bottom of the door; that was all it took to give us enough room to slip in. There was a short passage that led past the bathroom on one side and the bedroom opposite, and although the area immediately inside the apartment was gloomy, a soft light glowed around the corner just past the bathroom door.
“What’s that smell?” Monkey said from behind me.
“Smells like rotten eggs.”
Edging forward cautiously, I peered around the corner slowly like I was playing some high-stakes game of hide-and-seek.
“Arrrgghh!” I squealed, turning my head away from the scene that greeted me and clamping my hand over my mouth.
“What?” hissed Monkey.
I was about to lean on the wall when I remembered Monkey’s warning about fingerprints and contented myself with leaning over with one hand on each thigh as I fought valiantly to keep my breakfast down.
Monkey pushed past me, his eyes betraying a curiosity that I knew would be wiped away in an instant when he saw what awaited in Gooch’s living area. Taking a couple of deep breaths, I followed my friend towards the macabre tableau.
He took short, tentative steps as if getting closer to the body would give him some insight, but it would take a lot more than a brief examination to work out what had happened here.
“What the hell…?” he said.
The body must have been Gooch’s – it was sitting on the sofa in his apartment, after all. Plus, the beige raincoat and hat that he favoured were both present and correct. Naturally, the briefcase was missing, but given that we’d seen Victoria leaving the scene with one very much like it, it was now safe to assume that she’d taken it from Gooch.
“How…?” said Monkey, trying and failing to frame a second question.
“Acid?” I replied, not really believing it but unable to offer anything more sensible.
What made it impossible for the two of us to be sure that the
body was Gooch was the fact that it didn’t look like him. But then again, it didn’t look like anyone. The two sides of his coat and the shirt underneath looked like they’d been clawed open to reveal skeletal bones underneath, small clumps of rotting flesh that looked like meat gone bad, clinging to the ribs.
His hat sat neatly perched on top of a skull whose empty eye sockets seemed to regard us with an understandable lack of emotion.
“This is definitely bad juju, Lorna,” Monkey said, shaking his head slowly from side to side.
“Yeah.”
“On the plus side, he won’t be bothering us again.”
“Only in our nightmares,” I suggested, but Monkey didn’t seem to see the funny side.
“What could happen that would leave him looking like a skeleton?”
Another answer I didn’t have. I was still trying to comprehend what had happened here when I noticed the pen and paper that rested on the coffee table near Gooch’s outstretched right hand – the bones of his right hand, I corrected.
“Look!” I said, pointing in the direction of the paper. “Remember not to touch it,” I instructed as Monkey angled his head to read what was written on the top page of the notepad.
“V kicked rim,” he read slowly, scrunching up his eyes in an effort to make out the spidery scrawl.
I looked over his shoulder, my heart skipping a beat.
“V killed Ram,” I corrected, turning to look Monkey in the eye. “Victoria killed Ramón!”
“She probably killed Gooch, so it makes some kind of sense.”
“This is making sense?” I asked incredulously.
“What does that say below?”
I read the other words on the page several times as I tried to make my best guess at what it said.
“The Sun. Small yellow… is that scone…?”
“Stone,” Monkey corrected.
“The Sun. Small yellow stone. I can’t make out the next word, but that last bit looks like I’m sorry.”
“The Sun!” Monkey repeated.
“Let’s take a photo and then get out of here,” I replied.
Chapter 34
We used a payphone to make an anonymous call to the police. I made up some story about how I lived in the apartment opposite and that I’d heard a lot of banging and shouting not long ago. I said that when I went to see what was happening, I’d been frightened off by the apparent break-in at apartment 212. The police had asked for my name, but I put the phone down, and we beat a swift retreat from the payphone, paranoia convincing me that somewhere, somebody would be watching.
We walked around town, discussing what Gooch’s note meant. It seemed obvious that The Sun referred to Abernathy’s third masterpiece – the one that, alongside The Frenchman and The Truth, represented the three works of art he’d crafted after the séance. But why had Gooch said that he was sorry? It appeared to be completely out of character based on our interactions with him.
The Beanfeast Café opened at nine-thirty on a Sunday, so we’d just have time to grab a hot drink before Monkey had his rendezvous with his Uncle Archie. He’d asked me if I’d accompany him, and I was only too glad to oblige.
I gulped a hot chocolate down, its warmth reviving my spirits somewhat. Despite buying a blueberry muffin, the image of Gooch’s rotting corpse meant that I only managed a small mouthful before pushing the plate aside. Monkey seemed to have no such qualms, inexplicably favouring a coke with ice.
“What does that word say?” he asked around a mouth of flapjack, pointing to the photo of Gooch’s note that I’d taken on my phone.
“Cherrybowl?” I suggested.
“What does that mean?”
“Search me. What does any of it mean? Apart from a couple of murders on Victoria’s charge sheet.” It was only at this point that I saw the unexpected benefit of our decision not to touch anything in Gooch’s apartment. The fact that we’d not taken Gooch’s scrawled note saved me from having to make another awkward call to the police. When they analysed the ‘V killed Ram’ statement, they might be able to get close to solving Ramón’s murder without any assistance from two teenagers who were making a habit of sneaking around where they shouldn’t be.
“What the hell happened to Gooch? It’s like he just ceased to exist!” Monkey said, shaking his head sadly. “Bad juju,” he said for the second time today.
“Supernatural?”
“Got to be.”
“Are you ready to see your uncle?”
“Not really.” He tugged at his collar and swallowed awkwardly as if he was feeling the nerves of meeting somebody from his past.
* * *
Back out to Henderson Park, and a few more dog walkers had appeared in our absence. The pale sun provided scant light in the eastern sky, and the frog was still dispensing cold water into the pool at its feet. I looked at my watch for the fourth time since we’d got here, watching the hands tick around past ten o’clock.
“He’s late,” Monkey said bitterly.
At that moment, a rotund figure appeared on the path next to the duck pond, shambling towards us nervously. I nudged Monkey and pointed towards the man as he drew closer.
“Game on,” I said
He was wearing a black beanie hat and an oversized woollen jacket. Even from this distance, I could tell that he was heading our way. Something about the look in his eyes. Those piggy eyes.
“I don’t believe it,” I said as the shock of recognition hit me. “Look who it is!”
He stopped in front of us, and despite the fact that he towered above Monkey and me, he looked apprehensive, casting about nervous glances as if he was worried about being seen here. The last time we’d seen him was at the lecture given by Henry Bannister-Reeves. Although the hat covered most of his hair, there was no mistaking him as the greasy-haired man who’d stalked us at the lecture. That night, I’d caught him staring at us on more than one occasion, and I’d worried that we’d attracted the attention of some weirdo.
“Hello, Arnie,” he said, his voice on the squeaky side for such a large man. He sounded like my grandad when he used to do impressions of wartime comedians.
“Arnie?” I said, looking at Monkey. Once I’d got to know him as Monkey, I didn’t question him any further on what his real name might be. It sounded strange hearing somebody address him as such – I expected him to be a David or a Thomas.
“Nobody calls me that anymore,” Monkey replied indignantly. “Not since my dad,” he added in a mumble.
“I’m sorry, I mean Monkey. I’ve heard a few people around town call you that, but it sounds strange after all these years.” He turned to me, extending his hand. “Archie Swift.”
“Lorna Bryson.” I shook his plump, sweaty hand and wiped it on the back of my jeans when he looked the other way.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know where to start. After your mum… well, let’s just say that it was difficult.”
“Dad didn’t talk about you much,” Monkey said with a shocking honesty.
“Your dad and I didn’t see eye-to-eye,” Archie admitted. “We had a falling out, and I think that he blamed me for what happened with your mum.”
“Why would he blame you for what happened with Mum?”
Archie coughed nervously, sending a plume of frosty breath into the air. “My family has suffered over the years. We’re not exactly good with people: tend to shut ourselves off in social situations.” Looking at his demeanour – his posture, the way he wrung his hands together as he talked, the way his eyes constantly flicked from left to right like a cornered rodent – it was like exhibit A in a psychology book. I understood exactly what he was trying to say.
“Melanie was very much like me. Our mum used to call us two peas in a pod, except that when we got into our teens, I was about twice her weight. Anyway, I’m rambling. Did your dad explain what happened between the two of them?” Archie asked.
I’m not sure Monkey expected a question like that. “Not really,” he answered defensively. “Just
that sometimes two people don’t get on and that he loved me, and he’d take good care of me.”
Archie grimaced at Monkey’s explanation like he’d been hoping his nephew would say something different. “Do you mind if we sit down?” he said, moving over to the bench.
Monkey and I joined him. Archie sat looking at the frog fountain for a few moments, rubbing his hands together as if gathering his thoughts. “Cold this morning, eh?”
Classic delaying tactics. He’d wanted to meet Monkey so badly to tell him something about his dad, and now he was offering nothing but throwaway lines about the weather.
“It’s not too bad for November,” I put in.
At least he had the good grace to smile ruefully as if acknowledging that he was skirting around the issue.
“I’ve put off seeing you for years, but after somebody showed me all that stuff in that article – Strange Days In Culverton Beck – and then all this stuff with the plane crash and now the murder…” He shook his head like he couldn’t quite believe everything that was happening. “Did you really climb the church tower?”
“Yes,” said Monkey impatiently.
Neil’s article again! Ramón had commented on it, and it seemed that a lot of people were taking a lot of notice of what amounted to a load of old tabloid nonsense.
“I thought you wanted to talk to Monkey about his dad, and now you seem to want to tell him something about his mum?” I’d originally agreed to accompany my friend to this meeting for some moral support and had intended to keep my mouth shut, but it was frustrating to watch his uncle dance around whatever it was that he wanted to say. I stopped short of saying something like ‘Out with it, man’, but it might yet come to that.
“I’m getting to that,” Archie replied, taking another deep breath. “When we were young, Melanie struggled with depression and anxiety. She went to see a psychologist several times, and as she grew older, she seemed to grow out of whatever was troubling her. She coped better with things, and then when she met your dad, I was glad to see that she was happy for once.”
