Indian Summer

by Sara Sheridan

  Then suddenly, Panther squirmed, Mirabelle swayed, almost losing her footing, and the dog slipped out of her grasp, dropping back into the darkness of the sewer.

  ‘Panther!’ Mirabelle called as she scrambled down the indented bricks to reach him. He was whining. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, feeling his body, checking him over by touch. As she put her hand on his back leg, he pulled away sharply.

  Mirabelle scrambled for the lead and then, slowly, she felt her way around the rancid pool, searching for the torch. It was lodged at the side of the sewer, soaked. She picked it up and felt liquid seeping out of it. There was no hope of it working now. Still, she wound the lead around one of the frets to stop Panther slinking off, and climbed up again, this time using the torch to hammer on the metal. At least it was useful for something. An age passed. Her arm cramped. She began to cry. She stopped. She started again. She screamed. Then she climbed down. Above, a car rumbled over the manhole. She let out a cry of frustration and rubbed her arm as she pulled Panther on to her lap. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  The noise came hours later. It was easy to imagine it had taken days, but the tiny pinprick of light had turned to darkness only once. It’s Sunday, she thought. And then she heard it. Someone whistling. It sounded as if it was underwater, but it was distinctive – ‘Love Letters in the Sand’, just as if Pat Boone himself was up there. She scrambled up the frets and resumed banging with the torch. ‘Help! Down here! I‘m in the sewer!’ The whistling came marginally closer and then it faltered. A voice called nervously. ‘Hello.’ A man’s voice.

  ‘Help,’ she screamed. ‘Help.’ She couldn’t remember ever feeling so desperate. She pushed upwards but the metal still wouldn’t budge, so instead she hit it so hard she thought the torch might shatter. Then, miraculously, it shifted on its own. A wedge of light cut into the darkness from above and a man’s face peered down, his body behind at a strange angle, in policeman’s uniform. He put his arm over his mouth and nose. ‘Blimey,’ he said.

  A fine mist of drizzle descended as Mirabelle emerged. The light on the street seemed blinding, though the sky was clouded over. She narrowed her eyes. A smile spread involuntarily across her face and she felt unaccountably grateful. ‘My dog is injured. He’s still down there. I dropped him when I was trying to get out.’ She babbled. She reeled. The look on the officer’s face betrayed his disgust but she didn’t care. As she looked down at herself, covered in effluent, she began to laugh. The light rain wasn’t strong enough to wash it off. She’d need to be hosed off and soaked in a light solution of bleach, she thought. Was that even possible? Then, from below, Panther barked and gave a little growl.

  ‘I’ll get him,’ Mirabelle said, and climbed back into the hole.

  Panther, she realised, as she looked at him in the light, was in no better state than herself. As she climbed back on to the street, the officer had leaned over and was being sick into the gutter. Mirabelle hauled herself on to the pavement, patting Panther’s head. He whimpered a little and then started to lap at one of the puddles. Mirabelle thought that she was thirsty too. Drinking from a puddle seemed the least stomach-turning thing she had done in the last day, but she held herself back.

  ‘I want to speak to Superintendent McGregor. There are bodies down there. Dead people.’ She looked around. The street was familiar now her eyes had adjusted to the light. It wasn’t that far from the front. She could have sworn she’d walked miles. ‘Where is this?’ she asked.

  ‘You’re at the bottom of Kemptown, miss,’ the officer said.

  ‘Yes of course,’ Mirabelle replied. She was just round the corner from the garage – Vesta’s friend. She remembered the smell of the place – petrol and the whiff of something else they’d thought at the time smelled disgusting. She laughed again. It felt as if she’d never be able to smell anything again.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the policeman asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It’s the dog that’s hurt. I expect we’ll need the services of a vet.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest

  The sight of them caused quite a stir as Mirabelle, Panther and the policeman rounded the corner. A few women closed their front doors but the police officer knocked them up and insisted they fetch buckets of water. He opened his police box and fetched a wooden fruit case so Mirabelle could sit down on the edge of the pavement. Someone balanced a large umbrella next to her but the rain was almost off.

  ‘I know one of the victims,’ Mirabelle said. ‘She was a nurse. A sister.’

  The constable put up his hand to halt her. ‘We can’t put you in a Maria. Not like that,’ he said.

  ‘But …’

  ‘Ah, thank you madam.’ The officer spoke over Mirabelle’s head as one woman threw a bucket of water over Panther. It hardly disturbed the sewage clinging to his coat, although a little ran off into the gutter, at least.

  ‘Poor little thing,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get you clean again.’

  ‘His leg is injured, actually,’ Mirabelle cut in.

  The constable disappeared back inside the box and the sound emerged of him speaking on the telephone, calling the incident in. A few doors down Mirabelle heard one housewife say to another, ‘It’s hardly sanitary, is it?’

  The policeman leaned out. ‘Name?’ he asked.

  ‘Mirabelle Bevan. These bodies are connected to the death of Gerry Bone, Sister Rita Taylor and Father Grogan,’ she said. She scrambled in her pocket and took out Sister Taylor’s cap. ‘Here. This is evidence.’

  The woman with the bucket peered at the cap. ‘You’ll never get those stains out,’ she said. ‘I could make you a cup of tea. How about that?’

  ‘Mirabelle Bevan,’ the policeman said, enunciating each syllable. ‘Oh yes? Missing person, eh?’

  ‘I’m not a missing person,’ Mirabelle objected.

  ‘Well, you were reported missing, miss.’

  Two more women arrived with buckets and both doused Panther. One of them had brought a piece of bone. She laid it on the pavement and Panther began to gnaw at it.

  ‘There,’ she said, proudly. ‘I thought you’d like that.’

  Things seem to be happening in the wrong order, Mirabelle thought. Everyone was focused on getting the dog clean, but there were bodies down there, right under their feet. A crime had been committed. More than one.

  In the first-floor windows, several lace curtains twitched. A young girl emerged from further down the street with an old flannel robe over her arm. ‘My mum says you might want to use this. Them clothes will have to go out, she says.’

  The women with the buckets huddled. ‘Seems a shame,’ one of them chipped in, ‘but Margaret’s right.’

  Mirabelle stood up. ‘I found bodies,’ she said again. ‘Underneath the street. This street, or at least very close to it. Four or five of them. This is all very well, but that’s what we ought to be thinking of.’ One of the bucket women put her arm around the young girl’s shoulder. ‘She’s hardly twelve yet,’ she hissed in Mirabelle’s direction. ‘You don’t want to scare her, do you?’

  Mirabelle felt like stamping her foot. The policeman emerged from the box. ‘They’re sending a van,’ he said. ‘As I thought, a Maria is out of the question.’

  One of the women gingerly touched Mirabelle’s boot and got hold of the zip. She pulled it down. ‘There,’ she said. ‘You won’t be wanting these things, Tommy, will you? They ain’t evidence, are they?’

  The policeman wrinkled his nose. ‘And where would we keep them, even if they was? Not in my box, I can tell you that. I can’t see as we’ll need to keep them.’

  Mirabelle stepped out of the boot and removed the other one. She undid the zip on her skirt. The women all looked at the policeman. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you can go in there,’ he motioned towards the box. ‘Lean over, love,’ someone said, and when Mirabelle did she emptied cold water over her head. Mirabelle struggled momentarily to catch her breat
h. She licked her lips and then realised several of the women were wincing – heaven knows what she had just ingested. Ignoring them, she limped inside the box, removed her filthy clothes and changed into the dressing gown. A film of sewage lingered on the surface of her skin. When she came out, somebody handed her a jam jar full of hot, sweet tea and someone else had removed the umbrella. It looked as if the sun might come out.

  ‘Ain’t you got a cup, Ivy?’ someone asked.

  Ivy didn’t reply. She wasn’t using her best china on a madwoman covered in excrement. ‘That can go out afterwards,’ she said, nodding at the jam jar.

  Mirabelle sipped. Her stomach felt warm and a glow circulated around her body as the tea had its effect. ‘That’s better, eh?’ Ivy smiled. ‘Tea’s antiseptic, isn’t it?’

  A few minutes later, the police van pulled up with a very young constable at the wheel. From beside him a man with a leather doctor’s case sprang on to the pavement. He was old with rheumy brown eyes and he had a limp.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said to the officer at the police box. ‘You weren’t joking.’

  ‘The dog has hurt his leg,’ Mirabelle said, pointing at Panther. ‘I’m fine. Are you Dr Williams’s replacement?’

  The doctor locked eyes with the policeman. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Down from London?’

  He nodded. ‘How well do you know Dr Williams?’

  ‘He was my doctor,’ Mirabelle said. ‘I don’t have a GP.’

  ‘Ah, that was my next question.’

  The man crouched next to Panther and gingerly touched the dog’s hind leg. ‘Well boy,’ he said kindly. Panther growled and then whimpered. The doctor took a splint from his case and began to bandage it. ‘He’ll need to go to a vet, but this will help. How on earth did you get down there?’

  ‘I broke in. Under the pier. I suspected that Gerry Bone had been using the place and I wanted to investigate.’

  The policeman took out his notepad and started to scribble. ‘Broke in,’ he mumbled as his pencil crossed the paper.

  ‘I was right,’ Mirabelle said, keeping her eye on him to make sure he kept taking notes. ‘As I said, there are bodies.’

  From around the corner she heard the sound of a bell approaching as a Maria pulled up round the corner and McGregor got out. To his credit, McGregor’s face registered little surprise when he laid eyes on her. The superintendent was good like that – he just accepted what was in front of him.

  ‘There are bodies,’ Mirabelle repeated and gestured towards the road. ‘In the sewer.’

  ‘All right. That’s enough,’ McGregor said. ‘Show’s over.’

  The assembled women hesitated for a moment and then began to make their way back inside. ‘We were only trying to help,’ one of them mumbled. The doctor got to his feet.

  ‘Is Miss Bevan all right, doc?’ McGregor asked.

  ‘Seems so. You need to get clean, Miss Bevan, and then I’d like to administer a tetanus shot, but you may well have an infection that arises. We’ll need to keep an eye on you for the next few days.’ He turned towards McGregor. ‘She says she doesn’t have a GP.’

  ‘No.’ McGregor’s tone was vague. He nodded in the direction of the car and the doctor got back inside. ‘That’s all, Constable,’ McGregor said. ‘You can lock up your box and be about your rounds. Turn in a report at the end of your shift, eh?’

  The constable looked doubtful. He lingered a moment but didn’t challenge McGregor’s instructions, and within seconds he banged the door closed, locked it and lumbered away. The Maria pulled off with the doctor, and the young constable lifted Panther into the back of the van and then climbed into the driver’s seat to wait.

  ‘Do you know where Chris Williams went?’ McGregor asked.

  Mirabelle shook her head. ‘He said London was too close but that’s all.’

  ‘I’ve been worried sick about you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I thought you’d gone with him – Williams, I mean.’

  ‘Sometimes you don’t seem to know me very well. Why would I run away with a handsome, talented young doctor when I could be lost, knee-deep in raw sewage with an injured dog?’

  A shadow of a smile played on McGregor’s face. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I know what a good-time girl you are. It’s true.’

  Mirabelle squirmed. She reassured herself she looked better than she had before she took off her clothes, but probably worse than when he’d seen her as she came to in Father Grogan’s bathroom.

  ‘The doctor’s right, I need to get cleaned up,’ she said.

  McGregor looked around. Shadows lingered behind lace curtains but the windows were all closed. ‘You thought I’d let it be,’ he said, keeping his voice low. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Let it be?’

  ‘Last year. Freddy Fox’s death. Everything that was going on.’

  Mirabelle half shrugged. McGregor was right – she hadn’t forgiven him or forgotten, whatever Freddy had done: what had been meted out wasn’t justice. ‘I want you to know I didn’t let it go. I want you to know that the last four days we’ve nicked every bent copper on the Brighton force who could be nicked.’

  She stared at him blankly. Alan McGregor didn’t do anything by halves.

  ‘I want this to make up for it. As much as it can, Mirabelle. I couldn’t do much last year – it takes time. But I’ve changed the force so it won’t happen again. Do you see?’

  She touched his arm. ‘I misjudged you horribly, didn’t I? First Rene and now this …’ she said. ‘You’re a good man, but you look as if you haven’t slept.’

  ‘I look better than you do, if you don’t mind me saying so.’ There was no measure in denying it. ‘We’ve been in every newspaper across the country,’ McGregor continued. ‘It’s a national scandal but we’re done. The Brighton force will be straight from now on.’

  ‘And you’re not interested in dead women? Not as interested as you are in bent coppers, anyway.’

  ‘I’m interested all right. I’ll send a team down this afternoon.’

  ‘Rita Taylor’s there.’ Mirabelle handed over the nurse’s cap.

  ‘Thanks. I guess you don’t let things pass, either.’

  McGregor put his arm out to guide her towards the van but Mirabelle hesitated.

  ‘You said four days,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you made the arrests on Saturday night.’

  McGregor nodded. ‘It was the night they least expected it. Belton’s still processing the last of the poor buggers. It’s gone well in the main. Chris Williams is missing in action – a couple of other guys too. Ridge is furious – well, you saw – but I did what I intended. We won’t make the charges stick with everyone, but none of those guys will work on the force again. Two men have put in to emigrate to Australia.’

  ‘Four days from Saturday is Tuesday.’

  McGregor looked after the car that had left, clearly worried he’d let the doctor depart too soon.

  ‘Was I down there all that time?’ Mirabelle continued. ‘Two full days, that would be.’

  ‘Vesta reported you missing on Monday when you didn’t turn up for work and there was no sign of you at home. She’s been worried sick. I had somebody nip up to let them know. Bill Turpin has been out with a dog whistle on the beach – he reckoned if he could turn up Panther, he’d turn up you as well. Or your body. We’ve been worried sick.’

  Mirabelle began to walk towards the van. She had trouble keeping steady. ‘I didn’t mean to worry anybody,’ she said under her breath.

  McGregor held the door for her. ‘I can only imagine that you’ve been worrying people since birth,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll go and see them now.’

  McGregor caught hold of her hand. ‘They’ll be at Julie Turpin’s funeral.’ He checked the watch on his other wrist. ‘I was about to leave when the call came in.’

  ‘I should go.’

  McGregor looked her up and down. ‘I think you’re off g
ames, Miss Bevan. You can’t turn up like that, can you? You know that you can worry me as much and as often as you like. I’m just glad you’re all right.’

  Mirabelle sat down on the bench in the back of the van. McGregor climbed up and pulled the door behind them. He banged the side, the engine started, and he took a seat next to her. ‘The city’s never been so safe,’ he said. ‘No bent coppers left and all the criminals have scarpered. It’s a whole new Brighton.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Justice in the extreme is often unjust

  Belton arranged a hot bath at the public pool. The cubicles were generous and you could hire a towel and buy a tiny bar of soap for sixpence. WPC Bunch sat on a stool outside the wooden door as Mirabelle worked her way through three bars and refilled the water several times. She wondered if the bottle of peach bubble bath in her own bathroom would help. For the first while, the smell seemed to be getting worse, not better. Further along, someone abandoned their cubicle, complaining loudly. ‘It’s the hot water, love,’ she heard the attendant explain, ‘the poor woman was trapped in a sewer. It’s all got to come off her.’ Then the door slammed, and further along a window high in the wall creaked as somebody opened it.

  Gradually Mirabelle felt the air clearing and the water ran clean. She stepped out of the bath and towelled herself dry. A whiff of carbolic hit her like a curiosity.

  ‘Jessica,’ she called. ‘I think my sense of smell is returning.’

  WPC Bunch made a sound that indicated she had heard but wasn’t sure what to reply.

  ‘Do you know if they found the bodies yet?’ Mirabelle called over.

  ‘I can’t go and check. I’m not allowed to leave you, Miss Bevan,’ Bunch declared. After the spool-of-thread incident, Mirabelle could hardly blame her for not doing anything extra.

  ‘I’m coming out,’ she said. She opened the door with the towel wrapped around her. ‘I don’t have any clothes to put on.’

  ‘They’ll organise something, I’m sure.’ Bunch got to her feet to escort Mirabelle through to the women’s changing room, where a smiling female doctor applied a tetanus injection into her buttocks and dispensed a vitamin tablet and another cup of tea. ‘The super will want to see you,’ she said. ‘After they’re done. He’ll need to take a full statement. But for now you can go home.’