4 Bones Sleeping (Small Town Trilogy) Read online

  ‘Can I see?’ Stuart stared at my reading matter. I folded the report and placed my hand firmly on it. ‘Please yourself, you know I’m the soul of discretion.’

  We stared and eventually I smiled, ‘More than my job’s worth. I do need to talk about a couple of things though.’

  Like our erstwhile detective’s involvement.

  The door rattled open and talk of the devil… Don’s bulk hovered over the threshold. No sneer across his face, unusual in itself. Nothing, just a closed expression, although it was soon apparent that he was open and ready for business. Don quickly glanced Carol’s way and gestured with his head.

  ‘Give me a minute with this tosser.’

  Carol stared back, raised her eyebrows as if to say no arguing please. Sighed at the impossibility of this simple request. Stood and went out the back.

  No pleasantries from Don, he just pointed at Stuart. ‘Where’s your mate?’

  I watched Stuart’s eyes, just a momentary flicker. He lifted his legs off the table and swung around to face Don. ‘Which mate?’

  Don frowned, ‘You know which one, where’s the Paddy?’

  Stuart shook his head, ‘Not a clue.’

  ‘You were seen driving him out of town last night.’ Don’s temper was always on the edge at the best of times. Like an oil man desperately trying to cap a gusher, Don was having trouble right now. Stuart had become Patrick’s personal chauffeur recently, driving him somewhere for a night out, not in itself a rarity.

  ‘I took him to the Swan at Great Shefford.’ Stuart had learnt the best technique during interrogation is to drip feed information. Saying little, offering up stuff we all knew. ‘He hasn’t got a license thanks to you bunch of bastards, I drove him to darts.’

  Oh yes, we took our drink driving seriously around here, Patrick enjoyed doing it and Don’s colleagues had been out to nail a soft target. His second drink driving offence in eight years and Stuart took it all too personally. Not because he condoned the offence necessarily, he just hated Don.

  The feeling was mutual and Don kept pointing Stuart’s way as if to confirm this widely known fact. ‘But did you bring him back into town though?’ Don’s question coming back too quickly for my liking. He knew something that I didn’t.

  Stuart said nothing, just waited, he didn’t have to wait long.

  ‘Did you bring him back into town last night?’

  ‘Course I did, pretty late though.’

  ‘Your car wasn’t in its usual parking place at seven this morning when I went past.’

  Stuart shrugged and waited.

  I helped Stuart with a change of direction, ‘How come Shirley knows so much about the girl?’

  Don’s head went back; he blinked and stared at me. Pointed at Stuart and said, ‘Find him, he’s summonsed for the coroners this morning and we all know he’s not going to show.’

  Stuart pointed back at Don, ‘What about you? Anything to say about driving lessons in a police car?’

  Don’s dark skin reddened a touch and he sighed, a deep heaving groan. ‘Don’t get lippy with me. See you in court; tell your mate he’d better be there.’

  ‘You tell him yourself, you fucking…’

  I shouted, ‘Stuart!’ Then I watched as they stared one another down. I tried to dismiss Don by saying, ‘See you in court.’

  He ignored me and glowered Stuart’s way, ‘We’ll talk later.’

  Don finally nodded at me and left.

  I stood and walked close to Stuart. ‘You shouldn’t provoke him, it is his job after all.’

  ‘Why did you mention Shirley?’ Came back at me as quick as a flash. ‘Do you know what I know?’

  ‘I know nothing, just bits from the pathologists report.’ I shook my head. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’

  He raised his eyebrows, steepled his fingers together, before saying, ‘I don’t know much, only what Patrick’s told me.’

  We stared at one another, I brought my finger to my lips. Carol wouldn’t want us discussing her husband’s infidelities in front of her. I gestured for him to continue. Which he did, quietly and somewhat reluctantly I felt.

  ‘She was as mad as a March hare. Drank anything, snorted, injected… you name it. You know they had the scaffolding up against that wall for the best part of three months. She would leave curtains and windows open, walk around half naked. Patrick said that she just came right on, wouldn’t take no for an answer. You could see how attractive she was. What would you have…?’

  He trailed off, nothing was the obvious answer and he well knew that. I said, ‘She was fifteen, Patrick’s over thirty.’

  ‘Just over.’

  ‘Don’t…’

  He raised the palms of his hands, ‘Patrick never touched her. I believe him.’

  Stuart must have seen my frowning, look of disbelief and offered a reasoned defence for his absent friend. ‘You know how we are, if there’s something going on we can’t wait to tell each other. He told me from the beginning, she used him as a priest. He liked her and she told him that she liked them his age, or older even.’ Then he stared, enough bait there to hook an overfed barracuda. ‘Patrick puts women on a pedestal, he’s not pushy, he listens to them. I believe him, it wasn’t age that stopped him though. It was her being so barking mad. He didn’t want to exploit her, he tried to help her. I’m sure the thought of a prison sentence was always at the back of his mind though.’

  Did I believe that that? Maybe, ‘You make him out to be some sort of agony uncle.’

  Stuart laughed, ‘It’s why he so good with them. Try this for size, one of her teachers and her mother’s lover.’

  ‘Teacher? Mother’s lover?’ I felt my eyebrows arch and I fumbled for my cigarettes. ‘And let’s not forget Don.’

  I already had three or four red top newspapers on the story, if this got out we’d get the whole of Fleet Street. I flicked ash into the heavy glass ash tray and said, ‘Which teacher?’

  ‘Geography, slight chap. Wispy moustache and weak chin.’

  I knew that all the male teachers were heavily vetted, only the plus fifty five’s or the queer ones got jobs there… I thought.

  Stuart must have read my mind, ‘He was a limp wrister, but not that limp evidently.’

  ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘I played squash against him once, tidy player although he minced around the court like Liberace. He was in bed with her, until her schoolmates walked in that is. She liked an audience.’

  I frowned, ‘Don’t the police know?’ I knew the answer to that one and answered it myself, ‘Don’t tell me, the governors hope to keep it canned and then quietly sack the teacher.’

  Stuart nodded, ‘He’s gone and I don’t think the police know.’ He put his finger in the air, and then pointed it towards me as if it were a pistol about to be fired. ‘Patrick got caught as well.’

  ‘I thought you said he never touched her.’

  The palms of Stuart’s hands came up.

  Listen will you.

  ‘As I said she liked to shock. It shocked Patrick too and that takes some doing. He was talking, clambered through the window, sat on the window sill. She stripped off, slowly like some burlesque queen. Lay down on the bed, propped her head up with one hand. Like she was waiting for her schoolmates and sure enough, they burst into the bedroom a few minutes later and she just lay there. Legs open, showing the lot.’

  ‘You’ve only got Patrick’s side of the story mind. Going missing has made all of this worse. You have to get him to the coroners, he’ll go to prison.’

  Carol came back through and said, ‘No he won’t, not with other men involved.’ She sighed, ‘Women know these things, and Patrick’s not interested in schoolgirls.’

  How would you know?

  Stuart smiled at Carol, she lowered her eyes a touch and a glimmer of a smile crossed her lips at the same time. I felt I was missing something here. ‘She thought they all loved her and she fell for all of them. Loved them, fell completely.’
Stuart was still looking at her as he spoke, ‘And she was relentless, she wouldn’t take no for an answer.’ Stuart swallowed hard, ‘Relentless.’

  ‘That’s no excuse.’

  Carol blurted, ‘What about the mother’s lover then, or the recently departed teacher? He’s the one that rolled her joints for her as well.’

  ‘Did he now?’ I stared at Stuart, all the time wondering how Carol knew so much about this. Stuart didn’t want eye contact, he gazed at the clock and I talked to the side of his face. ‘Patrick has to make contact, Carol’s right, it will change things with others involved. You’ve got time before the coroner arrives. Go and get him, it looks so bad if he doesn’t show.’

  Stuart looked down at the floor and said nothing, the seconds ticked by. Finally he dragged his eyes my way. ‘He… I can’t get him back.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I gave him a lift.’ He lowered his gaze and swallowed hard as I stared, the horrible intuition within me that the young man opposite had implicated himself somehow. He showed me the palms of his hands.

  You’d do the same for a mate.

  ‘Where did you take him?’

  ‘Holyhead.’

  ‘Oh God.’ Whispered from Carol’s lips.

  I groaned and sat down, a suspect safely ensconced in some bolthole in deepest rural Ireland by now.

  *****

  I stared around the darkly lit, wood panelled courtroom, glanced across at the reporters from the dailies. Nosing around, ringing the office, casually bumping into me in the pub. Asking me questions, what was she like? Why did she do it? But I told them nothing, this was my coroner’s report to write up, my dead body to gossip about. Not a clutch of minor crime reporters from the red top newspapers.

  We sat in the corner of the darkly lit courtroom. With the entrance diagonally opposite, I had every angle covered. I had become well used to the coroner’s dull monologue over the years. He had an unfortunate delivery, whatever the subject matter, I felt his wooden delivery rendered everything to a list of names in the phone book. On and on he rambled, until he read out the name of the father that is.

  Bernard Schwartz.

  I shook my head in disbelief; Bernard Schwartz was the real name of the actor Tony Curtis. I craned my neck but could only make out someone with thick, black hair swept straight back over his scalp. An expensive black suit, a powerful neck and wide shoulders.

  ‘My name is Bernard Schwartz and I live at Rose Cottage in Sonning.’

  I blinked twice, three times. My throat dried, I thought I might faint. The voice jarred. A mongrel accent, cockney and something continental. Despite this, alarm bells clanged away, a voice from my past. I never realised that they could speak, but I’d just heard the voice of a ghost.

  Teddy - 1980

  Teddy listened to his wife, giving her name and address. Her head down, speaking so quietly.

  Speak up you slag.

  He stared at the fat coroner and his mind drifted away, a beach in Spain, a camera. A zoom lens, a couple kissing. Not on a beach though. Somewhere much cooler, Abbey Meadows in Oxford. He had followed them from the gates in front of Trinity College. Hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder at times. She kept kissing the man. Weedy little fucker, hippy looking little cunt. He knew the man, geography teacher. Shook his hand once, like grasping a wet lettuce.

  They had sat close to the river bank. Even from this distance, the zoom lens picked her exquisite jaw-line. It certainly picked up her hand all over his cock. It couldn’t miss the hand going up her skirt either.

  The fucking bastard, someone else on his growing list of scores to settle.

  ‘Mr Schwartz.’

  That little ginger moustache nuzzling into her neck. His zoom lens picked her saying something – I love you?

  ‘Mr Schwartz?’

  She always said that to me – right up to the end. ‘I love you daddy.’

  ‘Mr Schwartz, Mr Schwartz – are you all right?’

  He looked up at the coroner, blinked at the fat face and nodded. But he kept thinking of his gorgeous daughter and that song.

  That bloody song was making him cry now. The bloody, fucking, sentimental fucking garbage.

  And I miss you

  And I'm being good

  And I'd love to be with you

  If only I could

  When flowers bloom and robins sing.

  ‘Mr Schwartz – do you need an adjournment for a few minutes? He felt his wife’s arm come around him, he shrugged it off.

  It was his voice, but he didn’t remember speaking. ‘Get on with it. Just get the fuck on with it.’

  9

  Jack - 1945

  I tracked Shirley down later, a broad smile and she rushed over to greet me, up on tiptoe and she kissed my cheek.

  ‘Jack – stranger, how’s things?’

  Jesus she looked so good, low cut gown, but a cut above her surroundings here. She dealt cards for the poker games, I’d watched her many times before – a player of no little skill. I think most poker players struggled to take their eyes from her breasts as she dealt the cards. Her eyes always fixed on the player about to get the bum hand. Making sure his eyes were on her cleavage. Always the breasts pushed up like some regency courtesan.

  I said, ‘I’ve not seen you much since Teddy’s been out.’

  She stared hard at me, ‘No?’ The gaze came unremittingly my way, I looked around at the market traders, finished for the day and having a few hands before they made their way home. I felt her hand on the back of mine. ‘Why – are you worried?’

  How long have you got?

  I told her about the fight, although not mentioning the intended double cross.

  ‘I knew something was going on.’ Shirley’s articulate eyebrows went up a touch. She tugged at her silver earring, looked away and smiled. ‘Poor Jack – life’s complicated for someone like you isn’t it?’ Shirley glanced at the poker players, one of whom waved frantically her way. Shirley fixed me again, ‘I have to get back to the game, listen… have no doubt that Wyn’s well in control of the situation. Me too, don’t forget that I’ve got the perfect way out of all of this if things go wrong.’

  ‘I think that you should get out for a while, it’s going to get hot.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We’re about to come under the protective arm of Teddy Lewis and you know how unpredictable Teddy is.’

  No wonder she was so good at cards. I got nothing from her except a sigh, then she said, ‘We’ll see.’

  With that she turned on her heels and left me. It seemed that everyone had this collective complacency around them.

  I went out into the evening sun. Blinked into it as I walked south west along Conduit Street, blinding me… but to what? I didn’t know if Wyn and Shirley might be stitching Teddy up. Or more likely, Shirley and Teddy were double-crossing Wyn. And all the time Teddy was marauding around out there. Either way it became an explosive equation, all these questions, even down to the small bite on her left breast.

  Who did that?

  *****

  Women had always felt comfortable talking to me, I never understood why. Always smart in appearance, not especially good looking and certainly no athlete. But talk they always did. When Peggy asked to meet me at lunchtime, I never questioned meeting at short notice. We arranged to meet in the Bag of Nails in Victoria, a pleasure for me, not a duty that needed to be reluctantly discharged.

  Two suitcases alongside the table where she sat alone, sipping her Gin. Peggy’s eyes red after recent burst of tears. She refused another drink, I sat opposite, and proceeded to chatter away mentioned the weather, how was she, everything but her suitcases.

  I needed shutting up and she duly obliged.

  ‘Jack – stop a minute, listen.’ She sighed, ‘I’m clearing out, Shirley’s told me about the fight, you’ve all gone mad.’

  I put my glass down, offered her a cigarette and lit it for her. Peggy sat on the edge of her seat and stared down at the
table. After several deep breaths, her eyes grudgingly came up to meet mine.

  I shook my head and dragged the smoky air in with a hissing intake. ‘Well, I’ll be sorry to see you go, it’s the sensible thing to do mind.’

  Peggy let go of my hand and sat back, ‘I’ve got enough money.’ The ghost of a smile tweaked the corner of her mouth, ‘Don’t tell Harry, not until after the fight. He thinks I’ve been detailed to the barracks at Chelmsford for a few days. I’m going back to my cosy little town and all the reassuring gossip that goes with it.’

  ‘Do you need any money?’ Cash had suddenly become something as disposable as a bag of dolly mixtures. Something I could throw around, after all I had it coming out of my ears. I had a job, not for much longer mind and Wyn had me on his payroll as well.

  I pulled my wallet out, Peggy put her hand up, a policeman on point duty.

  Stop!

  ‘Keep it Jack, its all blood money, murder money.’ She said it again, ‘You’ve all gone mad.’

  We both stared the same point on the table, I talked, directing it towards the table. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘My sister to begin with – her husband… never came back from Burma.’ Peggy sighed, ‘She lives between Oxford and Reading.’

  I pointed towards her suitcases, ‘Coach or train?’

  ‘Paddington – taxi’s coming in a few minutes and don’t offer to pay for that either.’

  ‘What about the army? You’ve signed on for five years.’

  She shrugged, ‘Told them I was pregnant. Dishonourable discharge, my feet never touched the floor. Listen, you know where I’m going, if things die down and he wants to see me. Point him in the right direction will you?’

  I watched the taxi pull away – took a deep breath. Both of our word’s changing, hers becoming safer, mine about to fall apart. I imagined Harry and Wyn, putting the barricades up.