by Gwen Moffat
‘It was just temporary. I’m not a traveller, I’m a loner.’ The statement was automatic, her thoughts were elsewhere. ‘That what you said about The Sun. You’re not going to put me in the paper?’
‘Of course not.’ He thought better of that. ‘You’re a very interesting person,’ he added gently, ‘but newspapers like sensational stuff: sex and violent death, you know? And I’m not with The Sun; that was said to scare the inspector. Now what would he be inspecting?’
‘I thought it was cows.’
‘Never. He’s not dressed for it. I’ll find out. It’s as well to know your enemy.’
The drama pleased her and she flashed him a gamine smile. ‘You’re on my side?’
‘Isn’t that obvious?’
‘But — you’re not a reporter at all?’
‘I’m a free-lance. I sell items — that is, stories — to the highest — well, not exactly the highest bidder, but I get paid.’
‘You going to write about the inspector — no, you said you wouldn’t mention me.’
‘Besides, there’s a law of libel. At the moment we’ve got a stand-off: both sides know the other guy’s been naughty but neither’s going to the police, right?’
She grinned and wriggled like a six-year-old. He would have liked to know her background: young offenders’ institution, foster homes? He wouldn’t ask. She was like a little feral cat, to be treated with circumspection. One wrong question and she’d make him stop the car and she’d leave with her rucksack and her dog, even, he thought ruefully, with something of his, like the camera. And he didn’t want her to go. But was it wise? Still, he didn’t know she was under-age.
*
Isaac Dent marked where the bone fell and moved unhurriedly to retrieve it. A tourist stopped in front of him. ‘What have you got there?’
Isaac was disconcerted. On his own ground he wasn’t accustomed to being addressed with authority, and never so by a tourist.
‘Old sheep’s bone,’ he growled. ‘One o’ my animals.’ His glare said, And what’s it to you?
The man held out his hand. ‘Give it to me.’
Isaac’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘What right you got —’
‘Hand it over, man!’
Isaac did so. He was over seventy and his generation could still be intimidated by a classy accent.
‘What is it, Charles?’ Now the wife was in on the act, ignoring Isaac, studying the bone.
‘You’re a poor shepherd,’ the man said. ‘You don’t know what a sheep’s leg looks like?’
Isaac’s mouth opened and closed.
‘Why, it’s —’ The wife looked from the bone to her husband, and then she did stare at Isaac. ‘How did you come by this?’
He blinked at them uncertainly. ‘Picked it up. Just this minute.’ He waited tensely.
‘You do know what it is,’ the man said, and it wasn’t a question.
The woman said sternly, as if Isaac were a small boy, ‘My husband is a doctor. This is a femur — a human leg bone.’
Isaac nodded slowly. ‘I thought you was just tourists. Wanted to spare you like.’ He looked across the razed village to the knoll where the church had stood. ‘The girl’s dog were carrying it and they come through the old graveyard.’ He looked to see if they followed his reasoning.
The doctor turned to his wife. ‘The graves were exhumed before the water reached them.’
‘It seems small, Charles.’
‘Of course. It’s a child’s femur.’
2
‘Why didn’t you tell someone what this Uncle Bill was doing?’ Rick asked, appalled. Everyone knew it happened, but coming direct from the victim it was brought home. ‘If you couldn’t tell his wife, there were your teachers.’
‘You reckon they’d have believed me? They never believe kids. I wasn’t the only one either; you don’t know the half of it. Most of my mates, boys as well, got screwed in the centres. Or the foster homes.’
‘Oh no, I can’t believe —’
‘You blind and deaf? Everyone sees the News. You can’t have missed all those blokes being sent down: been abusing kids for years and years.’
She was right. Hardly a week went by without some revelation concerning paedophile rings and children’s homes. Perry didn’t seem heated about it, only scornful of his shock when it was laid out for him.
She lounged in an easy chair at the open window of his flat in Plumtree Yard, drinking Coke while casually filling him in on her background. Not recent developments (he guessed she’d been on the run when she joined the travellers) but her upbringing. It was the not unusual story of the mother who didn’t want her and the stepfather who wanted her too much, of thieving and expulsion from school, of foster homes and Uncle Bill: the man who could thrash and fondle in the same day, the same hour. ‘Plenty more where he come from,’ was her comment, and his anguished concern for her overrode the horror. He wanted to hold her, to convey, by physical contact, security, comfort, and he knew the last thing he should do was to touch her. Initiative must come from her. What initiative? The only affection she knew was for an old fat collie. Rick suppressed his emotions and tried to observe her objectively, pleased that she should be relaxed, trusting one man at least although alone with him in a secluded flat.
Plumtree Yard was indeed secluded. Only a short distance from the centre of Kelleth, it was approached by a tunnel between an estate agent’s and an Oxfam shop: a roofed alley that widened to a well between the back of an old mill and this eighteenth-century house that was now two flats. On this fine evening swifts were hawking the air above the roof-tops, their screams louder than the murmur of traffic in Botchergate and the sound of television from Edith Bland’s flat.
Perry hadn’t turned a hair when she heard noises coming from his fellow tenant. In her short life noisy homes had been the norm. Fortunately Edith, who was slightly deaf, kept the TV in her bedroom, along with the telephone. Her bedroom was above Rick’s, and since he worked in his living-room the noises from upstairs were no more intrusive than those of the distant traffic.
‘I like it here,’ Perry said suddenly. ‘Can I crash on your floor?’
He gulped. ‘Be my guest.’ He started to say that she’d find the floor hard but saw that that could be construed as an invitation to share his bed. He had no guest room. Now he was tongue-tied.
He’d brought her home — what else could he do? He could have put her on the road to Scotland, which she said she wanted to visit, stopping first at the supermarket to buy food for her and the dog. But any idea of her pushing across the border this night died in the supermarket. How could she cook steaks on the road, cook anything? And she was so thin. He’d watched indulgently as she filled a trolley in Safeway, he’d paid and he brought her home. He fed the dog and cooked the steaks while she showered, emerging from the bathroom in clean slacks and a black T-shirt that made her look like a biker’s moll.
At first she’d been disappointed by his home but it was only temporary, he told her, he had his own place in Manchester. His reason for being here puzzled her; he had come to the Lakes because it was reputed to be one of the few areas in the country that was relatively free of crime. ‘Let’s go for something upbeat,’ a features editor had suggested. ‘Try a series from the outback: remind our readers there are places where women can go out alone at night, where their kids come home from school unaccompanied, where people live normal lives — and all under a benign police dictatorship.’ It was the dog days when journalists scraped the bottom of the barrel for items to fill the void.
Rick thought he could turn his hand to anything — including fantasy — so he accepted the commission. He could turn a blind eye to the drugs and vandals, and thefts from cars at beauty spots, so he was looking for anything upbeat in this old sandstone town (‘a rose-red city half as old as Time’ — he’d have to work that in somewhere). In fact he’d been agreeably surprised by Kelleth’s secret yards, unlittered in his book, in the rough but friendly inhabi
tants whom he could idealise.
Rick was a good writer and an inquisitive journalist; he knew his own worth. He made enough from papers and magazines to keep body and soul together and run an eight-year-old Escort, but the big time, the big story, eluded him. He followed every thread, seized every opportunity but something was lacking. Today was typical. Alert for old-fashioned values, for nostalgia, he’d paid a second visit to the site of the drowned village but, like the first time, he’d seen only mud: a landscape without human interest.
There had been figures, passion even; there was the fat man’s rage, Perry’s panic, even old Isaac’s avid curiosity, but these had nothing to do with his series. What he needed — The telephone rang.
Startled, he saw Perry jerk awake. A fine host he was; how long had he been ruminating while she slept?
‘Rick,’ came Harald Fawcett’s voice, ‘did you forget us?’
‘What?’ He was disorientated. ‘Forget you, Harald?’
‘You should be here, dear boy. You were asked for drinks at eight.’ Gently disapproving.
‘Oh, my God!’ Rick’s eyes slewed to Perry, who was suddenly wary and sullen. He swallowed and said pleasantly, trying to reassure her with his tone, ‘I’m so sorry, Harald; a guest turned up and I clean forgot —’
‘Bring him with you. We’re waiting. Melinda’s eager to meet you.’
‘I’m not sure she feels — There’s a dog too.’
‘A lady? Splendid. What kind of dog?’
When he replaced the receiver Perry was on her feet, wide-eyed. He knew she was about to leave. ‘We’re going to my landlady’s for a drink,’ he said wildly. ‘I promised and I forgot. You’ll like them.’
There was no alternative. If he left her in the flat she’d be gone by the time he returned, and he had to go to the Fawcetts’ because they’d invited this Pink woman who Harald had said could open media doors for a young journalist. Ridiculous proposition; as Rick understood it Melinda Pink was an aged writer who probably still used a fountain pen. But Harald and Anne were his landlords and must be humoured, this apart from common courtesy. So he had to go, and Perry should go with him.
‘I can’t leave Bags,’ she said. ‘And I’m not taking him; he smells. He always farts if you feed him too much, and you did.’
‘You were in the shower and he insisted. Put your sleeping-bag down beside him and he’ll know you’re coming back.’
*
In Nichol House Anne Fawcett emerged from the cellar with a bottle of Moselle and held it under the cold tap. ‘That’ll have to do,’ she told her guest who was filling bowls with nuts. ‘Really, Harald is too exasperating: asking total strangers along on the spur of the moment. People who don’t know us go away from here thinking he’s mad and I’m domineering, but he does need supervision. You can’t have him talking about cutting up dead bodies at the table —’
‘This is only drinks.’
‘You know what I mean; half the time he’s in a fantasy world. He talks about crime as if it were real.’
‘It’s real enough,’ Miss Pink said.
‘I meant the books he reads and, of course, his own novel.’
‘It keeps him occupied.’
‘Thank God. There’s so much to do with the properties, and this house — shopping, the garden; I really can’t find the time to take him for runs now he’s given up driving. Of course he couldn’t go on, concentration seemed to go at the same time as memory. It’s so good of you to take him out with you.’
‘But I enjoy his company,’ Miss Pink protested. ‘I can go along with the loss of memory — which isn’t that bad, and if his brain misses a cog now and again, it’s like switching channels: you can pick up the new subject if you listen.’
‘Friends can. People who don’t know him can be terrified, or they exploit him. Not if I’m around, of course. I only hope Rick had the sense to tell this woman that Harald’s showing his age.’
Turned seventy herself but well-preserved in her neat jade pants suit and Gucci spectacles, Miss Pink reflected that her hostess wasn’t all that perceptive, and wondered about her background. A robust woman in her sixties, Anne was handsome but there was an air about her that suggested yeoman stock rather than landed gentry.
Miss Pink’s friendship with Harald Fawcett had never been close. Although she’d known him for decades, they had met only occasionally and that by accident at climbing centres. They had climbed together once or twice but until now she hadn’t visited him, had known little more of his home life than that he owned land in the Lake District. It was when she was asked to produce a new guidebook on the Border country that she had contacted him, thinking it possible he’d have a vacant cottage that she might rent for a short stay.
On the telephone Harald had been delighted, but curiously vague about accommodation, and she wasn’t surprised when his wife came on the line to explain that it was she who looked after the properties. Anne was polite but forceful; there was one vacant flat in town, she said: looking out on the churchyard. Miss Pink demurred, having anticipated some secluded cottage in a sylvan setting, even with a lake in view. Anne was dismissive; this was high summer, everything was booked, the best places were reserved a year in advance. Miss Pink thought of work, of money and the maintenance of her own house in Cornwall, now itself let to summer visitors, and she agreed to take the flat for three weeks. It turned out better than she’d expected.
The churchyard at Kelleth was a lush oasis in the centre of town, bordered by a pedestrian walk and buildings ranging from eighteenth-century cottages to the Victorian pile of Barclay’s Bank. The flat was above a bookshop and the outlook was green foliage and old tombstones. On the far side there was a glimpse of tall windows with white trim and the dull red walls of Nichol House, the Fawcetts’ place.
The Fawcetts’ family home was Orrdale House, familiarly referred to as the big house, and now occupied by their son, Bob, and his family who had opened it to the public. Harald had confided to Miss Pink that although he regretted leaving the house where he’d been born and brought up he was quite happy to have exchanged crowds of visitors for the peace of a smaller but private place and an overgrown garden. Manicured lawns and herbaceous borders weren’t Harald’s style, while running a large commercial enterprise would have been anathema.
Years ago he had published a novel on the spiritual aspects of mountaineering. It had some small success and then sank into obscurity. He had published nothing since but for some time he’d been working on a crime novel. He told Miss Pink that he found the research as exciting as the writing. She believed him, he was interested in everything. Unfortunately his grasshopper mind and the loss of memory meant that application was lacking. He saw plots and characters everywhere and could be distracted by a stone.
Miss Pink had been in Kelleth for three days and she’d taken Harald with her to the Roman Wall and a Bronze Age circle. Already she was familiar with the glazed eye, with the enthusiasm that would be appropriate to the moment but bore no relation to the exciting topic of a few minutes ago. Hadrian’s Wall suggested third-century crime with Picts in the heather and nervous mercenaries on the Wall. Excavations at a mile turret would make a grand setting for murder on a modern dig, he maintained, and kept that up until mesmerised by the potentially lethal antics of a motorist leap-frogging along a line of slower moving vehicles.
‘What should be done with that road-hog?’ he asked.
‘Nothing can be done before the event.’
‘Say he meets a charabanc and it plunges off the road to avoid him and catches fire, killing all the occupants. Schoolchildren. It would make a powerful story.’
‘Over the top. Let’s say two or three victims. The coach doesn’t catch fire, and the walking wounded escape through the emergency door.’
He wasn’t listening. ‘I could be the judge,’ he mused. ‘In the days before capital punishment was repealed.’
‘Even then it wouldn’t have been brought in as murder. No intent.’
‘The families of the victims wouldn’t see it like that. A novel would give more scope: written in the first person. I’d be a father. I’d stalk him.’ Miss Pink shot him a sideways glance. He was seeing images inside his head. ‘There was a fire,’ he murmured. ‘A slow death? Poor, poor mites. So’ — harshly — ‘fire for him too.’
‘Suppose your road-hog were a woman.’
‘Ah.’ He returned to the present. ‘Difficult, that. Do you have lady murderers?’
‘I write romances, but yes, I’ve had the occasional murderess in a short story.’
‘Needs research. I haven’t met any bad women, d’you see. I can kill men with impunity but even there, when I come to think deeply, to concentrate, I cannot cope with a slow death. It would be the same as torture, wouldn’t it? No, a quick clean bullet’s best, or a stab straight to the heart with something long and fine. A stiletto or a poignard.’
No wonder he terrified strangers, the more so because his voice was so sweet and gentle most of the time. For all his good manners and his vivid imagination he had blind spots, seemingly incapable of assessing the effect he had on his listeners, or maybe — she had considered this — maybe he was playing games, employing shock tactics for amusement. He was eccentric, not mad. This imagery, this other world where he came and went so easily, was no more than the creative world of any writer. The difference between herself and Harald was that where she recorded her observations like a reporter and never confused one world with the other, Harald lived inside his characters and their crimes and, it would appear, was close to a point where they would be crossing the divide between the imaginary world and reality. At the moment she thought he was using her as a sounding board, trying out a plot: Harald, who wouldn’t crush a beetle.
3
