4 Bones Sleeping (Small Town Trilogy) Page 2

  That kiss.

  That two year-old kiss, or was that a kiss from two years ago?

  Why did she do it?

  She was twelve years old. The sweet smell of pre-pubescence on her after two hours in her gymnastic class. When he picked her up in the car, she leaned over and kissed him. Not on the cheek either. He pulled back like he was avoiding a punch between the eyes.

  She stared at him with those dazzling almond eyes of hers. Then she said, ‘Why won’t you let me kiss you like mummy kisses that other man?’

  He’d done nothing wrong, but his wife… she was cracking up that was for sure.

  He should know, he knew all there was to know about mad women all right. Mad, sane, normal, whatever that was. Thirty five years down the road and he could only think of one woman. All the others became subconscious images somehow. The blonde was the one that always came into sharp focus.

  ‘Shirley. I wonder if she still tastes the same?’

  His wife said, ‘What did you just say?’

  He shook his head, ‘I never said anything.’

  ‘I thought you said something.’ His wife sighed, ‘What are we going to do about her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your – our daughter. What are we going to do?’

  He shut his eyes and massaged his temples with thumb and index finger.

  Over and over.

  ‘She’s in trouble.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What can we do? She shouldn’t have gone back to school. Whatever can we do?’

  Eventually, ‘I don’t know.’

  Jack - 1980

  I sat in my office, tapping my teeth with a pencil. I glanced down at my watch, just before midday on a frosty Wednesday. Copy for the week finished and a long lunchtime beckoned. Stuart sat back in his chair, with his feet on the desk, hands clasped behind his head. I smiled, he did a few hours a week for me, the rest of the time he worked in his father’s pub. An obvious act of nepotism on my part, but I liked Stuart and owed my life to his father.

  ‘You going for a pint?’

  I raised my eyebrows at Stuart, ‘What do you think?’

  I looked at my secretary. She smiled, knowing exactly what Stuart was angling after. Carol confirmed this by saying, ‘Jack’s Wednesday afternoon public bar discussion group. Membership by invitation only.’

  Carol couldn’t be called a beautiful woman in any sense of the word, eyes were probably too narrow and the thin lips gave a hint of meanness. But whenever she smiled like she did now, her mouth became suddenly generous and she lost her solemn, intenseness. Suddenly the intuition came to me that she would be all business in bed, I smiled to myself at this image. A sympathetic woman and a good listener too, strong and certainly no pushover.

  How did she put up with that lout of a policeman for a husband?

  ‘Where you going?’

  I shrugged; Stuart’s insistent questioning meant that he was angling for an invite. Stuart began to count his change, I sighed, nepotism comes at a high price.

  ‘Go on Jack – you can afford to buy the poor boy a pint.’

  I pointed at Carol, ‘You can be quiet as well.’

  We lapsed into a comfortable silence.

  Just the noise from the printing machines out the back. Sometimes they clattered and rattled like an Edwardian threshing machine. God knows how my three printers coped with it. Not that they were especially well rewarded for their efforts either. But two of them had been here since their schooldays.

  Three printers and two in the office, the sum total of my staff. As it happened, just enough to keep a provincial newspaper ticking over. Better still, all mine, an independent newspaper owner. I smiled at Carol and she smiled back, a bitter sweet affair that said, it’s nice to work for an honest man.

  If only she knew.

  Carol glanced over to Stuart and then back to me. ‘I can lock up if you two want to get off.’

  Sweet woman, relieved of my gate-keeping duties gave me a clear run at my favourite watering holes. Before I could thank her, my phone clanged into the collective consciousness of the small office. Stuart’s feet lifted clear and he swivelled his chair my way, sitting to attention at the same time. Carol’s eyebrows went up, she took all the calls, only two people had my extension and we all realised the potential significance of this call. My pulse quickened at the prospect of a decent story filtering my way at last.

  A soft, even voice, instantly recognisable. ‘I know you’ve probably wrapped up for the week, but I think you’ll be interested, a girl has either just fallen, or jumped, or maybe even been pushed out of a third floor window in St Mary’s. That’s the school not the convent. Just one thing, please don’t bring that hooligan you employ as a cameraman.’

  I smiled and glanced at Stuart. Calling him a cameraman was perhaps a touch grand. Calling him a hooligan would have been accurate ten years ago. The police and Stuart. In a way it summed up the beauty of a small town. Everyone knows one another. The police knew all of the tearaways. I got rules bent here and also scratched backs there. All so convenient, but it goes with the health warning that everyone always knows who’s doing the scratching and bending.

  That’s why Inspector Mably’s call was such a surprise in a way, he never usually took chances. Perhaps the article I put on page one about the charity efforts of his police station made him feel especially benevolent towards me?

  ‘First day back after the holidays as well.’ Apart from that comment, he was all business, brief and with no introductions, just that simple message, with a final instruction. ‘See you in a couple of minutes.’

  Then I heard the phone being placed ever so carefully back, like you would a baby back into its cradle.

  Once again I tapped my pencil against my teeth a few times, not caused by boredom this time however. St Mary’s was recognised as a public school with an unusually high standard of scholarship. Well that’s what the prospectus would have you believe. According to Harry, nothing other than a load of parasitic, St Trinian style hooligans marauding around the shops of a lunchtime. Despite their age, that didn’t stop him serving them whenever they crept into his pub though.

  I jumped up, ‘There’s either been an accident. Or a young girl may have been pushed out of a window.’

  ‘You’ll need a body guard then?’

  I smiled; my insecurity meant that I always needed some sort of protection. It used to be his father, now I had Stuart. A fair substitute I felt, although Harry would dispute that.

  ‘You’d better stay here. I’m meeting our erstwhile Inspector outside St Mary’s’

  Stuart’s mouth tuned down and he glanced at Carol and shook his head.

  I stood and took a deep breath at the chance of the first decent copy for months. A possible scandal at a posh school more than compensated for the interruption of my afternoons boozing. I stood and wrapped my scarf around my chest, dragged the heavy overcoat on. Placed my trilby at an angle set to impress Humphrey Bogart.

  I gestured for Stuart to stay put and I walked out into the midday air.

  The coldness crashed deep into my lungs as I walked up Grove Street. The sun low at this time of year, as it glistened off the frost still clinging to the rooftops. Frosty flowers of ice, frozen onto the pavements still in the shade. Freezing air and an almost cloudless, dark blue sky. Just a few broken red clouds arcing towards the horizon and my breath frozen and snorting out from my mouth as we marched on. An edge to the whisper of breeze, a breeze that would have felt like a gentle kiss in the summer. Now, it nipped like a Jack Russell and made your eyes run.

  I hurried past the Indian restaurant, evocative smells of cumin and cardamom drifted towards me. Mixing with the stale urine, left against the restaurant windows by the same louts that ate in there.

  I needed Stuart now, he knew everyone under thirty. He had his finger on the heartbeat of this little town’s pulse all right.

  I carried on up Newbury Street until I was alongside the imposing,
redbrick school. My messenger had been on the ball because no ambulance, no doctor even. Just Inspector Mably watching two policemen labouring away with a stolid purpose. They had fenced the area off with hazard tape. One of the policemen glanced up and down the street, catching my eye.

  ‘Watch out sniffer’s on the job.’

  They both laughed, but the underlying impression was a nervous one.

  Where’s that ambulance?

  Ignoring their sarcastic epithet, I joined Mably and we both stared up at the tall redbrick building. One open window on the third floor, with a muslin curtain hanging limply out of it in the still winter air.

  Mably lifted the tape and ushered me through.

  ‘It’s a mess.’

  He pointed at what was obviously the point of impact. Splattered red and lumpy grey bits, rather like poorly made porridge. The high wall had broken her fall, not that it had saved her. Head first onto its sixty degree corniced top and dead in the blink of an eye. I noticed her legs, slim and shapely. Her grey uniformed skirt well above her waist, no tights, light blue knickers. Both arms under her waist. Head over at a crazy angle, but her face unmarked and still beautiful. Almond eyes staring into space, classical cheekbones, strong chin and perfect teeth exposed in some sort of obscene, grin of a death laugh.

  I shivered and looked back up to the window. The four story building was encased in scaffolding and I knew the builders well.

  ‘Jack, I thought I told you not to bring him.’

  Mably was staring at me and pointing south towards Hungerford. I took my gaze up the street and groaned. Three builders stood ten yards away. All smoking, rubbing their hands in the cold. Sometimes the youngest of them looked up at the open window, as if expecting an action replay.

  Stuart stood at their centre and they inscribed a ragged, semi-circular arc around him.

  I groaned again, ‘I told him, sorry David, I’ll get rid of him.’

  Mably took hold of my arm, ‘All three might be suspects, I’ve told them to stay put. That long haired one is trouble. Look at them all talking as if nothing had happened.’

  His expression that of a straight-laced verger, viewing a rampaging, drunken mob.

  Teddy - 1980

  Two policemen stood in the drive.

  What the?

  His wife opened the door.

  ‘Mrs Schwartz?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Can we come in?’

  Teddy stared at them, the older of the two policemen nodded. The younger policeman looked away.

  ‘What do you two pair of…?’

  ‘Shh!’ His wife put her hand on Teddy’s wrist. Turned to the policemen and said. ‘What’s happened?’

  What’s happened? Teddy knew. He sat down and waited.

  The older policeman cleared his throat. ‘We’ve got some bad news for you.’

  But Teddy knew.

  3

  Jack - 1945

  I stared at the card Wyn had given me for most of the journey back on the tube. I got out at Oxford Circus and would normally have walked east along Oxford Street. But something dragged me south towards Beak Street and Wyn’s club. I used that closeness to my flat as an excuse. Despite the laughable name, I found myself walking in to the club. A piano played away to one side. I might not have liked the name, but the sweet, slow jazz piano that accompanied the darkness and the cigarette smoke matched my mood.

  I paid for a bottle of outrageously over-priced beer and took it over to a table. I saw her straightaway, she stared at me freely. As if she dared me to look at her, or more likely, dare me to look the other way. I did look away, glanced at a room full of women and tired looking men in shiny suits and cheap black shoes. But my eyes went back… and there she was. Close to Wyn, but she gazed around the club, constantly looking for eye contact with other men – and there were plenty of takers. She sipped her gin with one hand and held onto Wyn’s fingers with the other.

  She didn’t greet the other men with any degree of reverence or awe. But head on, everything was always head on with her. She looked at men with no inhibition and certainly no guilt. Yet to a man, we would all think that she only had eyes for the one she was looking at the time.

  In a room full of attractive women, she was the only truly beautiful one. A pearl necklace at her throat, an expensive watch on her slender wrist. She’d changed into a white evening dress, cut low. The impression of a woman that had never been hurt or scarred by a man and not likely to be either. She smiled at me and walked my way, her breasts moving against the sheerness of her dress. Sat down next to me and crossed her legs, waved back at Wyn with a dismissive flourish that said won’t be long, her crossed leg kicking slowly back and forth.

  ‘Well twice in one day, aren’t you a lucky boy?’ Then her knowing smile, she inclined the head a touch and she left her mouth slightly open. I was surprised by her voice, clear of the whining cockney vowels and the nasal awfulness that bombarded me all day long. Not Home Counties, Gloucestershire or Wiltshire maybe as she said, ‘You’re a reporter aren’t you?’

  I nodded; beautiful women didn’t walk over and talk to me unless they wanted something. She made me defensive, cautious around women at the best of times. I needed to know what she wanted and probably sounded abrupt in manner.

  ‘I’ve seen your picture in the paper.’ I remembered that she was hanging onto a man built like a concrete pill box. I took a flier at it, ‘Where is he… the big boy friend.’

  ‘A sharp man.’ She blinked, glanced Wyn’s way and then back to me, fingering her pearls at the same time. ‘I like my men a little on the dim side. I hope you’re not too sharp for your own good.’

  ‘Remembering faces is my job.’ I couldn’t place either of their names and it drove me wild, ‘What was his name?’

  She leant back in her seat, ‘Teddy Lewis – have you heard of him?’

  Then she stared right through me.

  Her answer, something about it annoyed me. As if someone so beautiful could drop the name of a psychotic tearaway into the conversation and I should be impressed. Stupefied or terrified probably, I tried to stop my eyebrows from going through the ceiling and all the time my heart pounded like a tattoo on snare drum. Teddy Lewis, doing time and Wyn was doing…

  I shook my head, ‘Teddy wouldn’t like you seeing other men would he?’

  ‘It’s all over now… anyway he’s a pussy cat.’ Then the same dismissive gesture with her hand. The same hand fluttered over towards me and she rested it on the back of my wrist. ‘Don’t look so shocked.’

  The eyes held me, trapped I fumbled for my cigarettes and the escape of distraction it might bring. No good, hooked liked every other man in here would have been.

  She smiled, another one in the bag.

  I said, ‘What’s your name again? Remind me?’

  ‘Shirley Mathews.’

  Yes!

  Shirley Mathews and Teddy Lewis made the second page of the Mirror a while back. To call them an attractive couple was an understatement. Teddy complemented her beauty. He was an eye-catching man himself, with his dark-skin, broad shoulders and those sculptured cheekbones. He was a striking looking man. I remembered staring at their photo and wondering which one to fantasise over. The photograph gave no indication of the power of his eyes. Hard, cold even, a bit like polished ball-bearings. Both of them dressed to kill, out on the town, snapped stepping into a club in Mayfair. My rabbit’s eyes blinked into the powerful headlights, Shirley just stared back.

  ‘He’s a striking-looking man.’ I never mentioned him being psychotic, unhinged, unstable and all of the other synonyms that neatly summed his character up. Or that I felt oddly attracted to him.

  ‘He’s dynamite.’ Shirley’s eyes clouded a touch and she sighed. ‘But all in the past now.’

  I struggled to change the subject, ‘You’re not from around here are you?’ Blindingly banal, but all my wit strangled by her sexuality and a vicious ex-boyfriend.

  ‘Small village in nort
h Berkshire originally – years ago.’

  A country cousin who had left home and here she was one up from being on the game. A good time girl and trouble with it, what a potent mix. Shirley’s eyebrows relaxed and she smiled, as you’d expect, her teeth were perfect. Small, even and brilliantly white, she leaned forward. The way you do when whispering to a fellow conspirator. ‘Would you like one of the girls to come over – bring a drink maybe?’

  I shook my head, a touch too quickly probably. ‘I’m going to have a drink with Wyn.’

  ‘You’d rather talk to the Major?’ Shirley inclined her head a touch, ‘What’s up, don’t you like girls?’

  What did I say to that one?

  Fortunately I never had to answer her question. A small man came over, thin faced. A countenance that would evolve in a few years, into a full weasel featured face, complete with six o’clock shadow across his sunken cheeks. His eyes darting everywhere, up and down me a few times. Then around the club, before finally settling on Shirley. A little man you felt would always be happier in the shadows. Certainly not someone comfortable in the sun. His de-mob suit hung loosely across his sparse frame, fitting where it touched.

  He pointed at Shirley, ‘You going to be long?’

  She rolled her eyes back and shook her head, ‘You know I have to stay, it’s my job.’

  He lowered the pointer that was his right arm and stared at her. I twisted in my seat, his expression indicated an argument, a shouting match, or at least a one sided accusation directed Shirley’s way. But a deep breath later and he turned, muttering away about sorting all of this out tomorrow and scuttled away. Looking for the shadows I imagined. I lit a cigarette and glanced across at Shirley. I’d just sat in amongst some sort of brief and one sided argument. A sudden squall on a calm August afternoon.

  She just shrugged and stood, I watched her as she smoothed the silky evening dress down. I felt my eyebrows arch, in profile it stood out like a barrow or tumuli in a flat meadow.