Brodmaw Bay (18 page)

James swam in the sea for an hour. He had no fear of deep water or of the predatory monsters with fins the tabloid press insisted lurked ready to eat Cornish bathers. He was imaginative only when he chose to be, in the creation and development of his epic game. He was not by nature fanciful. The fact of his having seen a schoolgirl two days before in the livery of a school that had closed fifty years ago was more than intriguing, it was bloody odd. Penmarrick’s revelation about St Anselm’s had chilled him the previous evening, when it had made the hair bristle on his forearms and his skin prickle momentarily with cold.

There was a plausible explanation. There had to be, because the girl had been real. The sight of the little apparition troubled him. But the explanation would not likely be made more forthcoming by dwelling on the mystery. He could not and would not forget about it. The pragmatic thing to do, though, was to put it to the back of his mind.

When he got back to the beach and the pile of clothing and other stuff he had left above the high-water mark, he had a strong phone signal and had received a call. There was no message but the number was that of DS McCabe’s mobile. James dried himself and dressed and then called him.

‘Not good news I’m afraid, Mr Greer.’

‘I’m a big boy, Detective Sergeant.’

‘A conviction is looking less and less likely. The perpetrators were a fifteen-year-old ringleader and his cousins who were twins of thirteen. The fifteen-year-old is the one using the tyre iron in the CCTV footage we’ve got. There is legitimate doubt about his fitness to stand trial.’

‘Go on.’

‘He was involuntarily incarcerated in a Kent mental institution after being given a psychiatric assessment by the immigration service. His mother engaged a civil rights lawyer from Canterbury who ended up getting him out. He’s been in and out of various psychiatric facilities ever since. Lewisham had him put in one after an assault on a teaching assistant at the special school he was attending there. The family were housed by Southwark, whose social services subsequently engineered his release. Are you keeping up?’

‘More or less I am. I can see where this is going. It’s multi-agency involvement. It will be argued that his problems were ignored, that he was a victim of official incompetence and neglect.’

‘He was involved with eight separate agencies. That’s become nine if you count us. Ten if you include his legal aid defence.’

‘How many trained and qualified and salaried individuals are we talking about?’

‘I would estimate between twenty and thirty. He’s at the sharp end of a growing industry.’

James nodded, licking rime from his salty upper lip. He was thinking about council and social services jobs that were really sinecures and the pension provision that went with them. He was thinking of his taxes paying for all this and justice never being delivered as a rightful consequence of the damage done to his innocent son.

‘What does she do for a living, the perpetrator’s mother?’

McCabe said, ‘Don’t make me laugh.’

‘His father?’

‘His father was killed in Mogadishu in a firefight four years ago. He earned his living as a warlord.’

‘What do you think the chances are of it coming to court?’

‘The odds have dropped to about sixty–forty against. I’m sorry, Mr Greer.’

‘Thanks for trying.’

‘It’s my job.’

‘It’s eleven, by the way.’

‘Come again?’

‘The number of agencies involved is eleven. A hospital surgeon and his theatre team were involved in patching up my boy. He hasn’t needed the treatment for psychological trauma they offered to provide, but it is there if required. The case notes have been compiled and a psychiatric counsellor briefed. The NHS makes it eleven.’

‘You’re right. I stand corrected.’

James looked out over the glittering sea. ‘How does it make you feel, all this stuff you have to deal with, Detective Sergeant?’

‘Where this case is concerned? Like somebody drowning,’ McCabe said.

The weather was on the turn by the time the evening’s festivities began at the pub. The wind had changed and the atmosphere had grown heavy and humid and the sky had become the cloud-dense colour of impending rain. The troupe of morris men performed their enigmatic ritual on the cobbled square outside the pub, under the stony gaze and bare-knuckled guard of Gregory Abraham, the old prizefighter.

They danced to the music of an accordion and a fiddle, expertly clashing the sticks they carried, weaving in and out of clusters in their white costumes and black top hats, bright with tied ribbons and pinned rosettes and slung baldricks, bell pads jingling at their knees and their iron-shod boots ringing on the ground.

For one dance they carried handkerchiefs and for another swords that looked like naval sabres from Nelson’s time. Perhaps they were, thought James, who watched the spectacle drinking a glass of ale and wondering what its origin was. The fact was that nobody really knew. All sorts of theories existed about the origins of morris and mummery rites but they had been established without their creation being properly chronicled. They were folk traditions, peasant in origin, and their mysteries defied scholarship as a consequence.

The tempo of the music was sufficiently rapid for dance and there was a definite enough rhythm to it, but there was also something plangent about the sound. Perhaps it was the instruments, James thought. The accordion had its avuncular wheeze and was redolent of sea shanties. Stringed instruments had a way of engaging the emotions though and the violin possessed a dark tonality. The effect of the two instruments combined was curiously wistful, melancholy almost. It sounded very Celtic. It could have been music shaped by a tradition that existed nowhere else on earth.

There was something about the costume and choreography that very quickly made a company of the dancers, so that it became impossible to view them really as individuals. They possessed a collective character. They were a skipping, clattering, jingling pageant. They also had about them, in their separateness and insularity, something slightly ominous. Some of the dances seemed warlike.

Fat raindrops began to fall in what soon became a persistent downpour just as the dancing finished. The morris men hurried inside the pub, their thirst fully justified by their exertions. James went into the pub in their wake and was standing at the bar ordering a fresh drink when the Penmarricks arrived and greeted him like an old friend. Curiously, on only his second full day in the village, it was almost what he felt.

Elizabeth Penmarrick seemed to have totally overcome her shyness of the previous evening. Her smile was broad and relaxed and she kissed him on the cheek in saying hello. He thought that tonight she looked like an advert for Laura Ashley from the pages of a Sunday supplement published in about
1975
. Her husband was dressed like one of those louche former public schoolboys who managed rock bands in the same decade. He bought them a drink and the three of them toasted one another silently.

‘I’m going to introduce you to a few people,’ Richard said, looking around. The interior of the pub was atmospheric with lantern light and Charlie Abraham had lit a log fire in the large grate of the saloon bar. It was June and not cold, but the flames added to the cheery mood of togetherness and warmth as the rain lashed and the wind whipped up in strength around the building.

‘Before I do that, though, I want to show you something.’

James followed him through the throng to the big picture window overlooking the bay, thinking that the Leeward did excellent business. Then again it was a special night, some sort of celebration of something. He would have to remember to ask the Penmarricks precisely what.

Beyond the window, beneath louring cloud, the sea boiled with elemental fury. It was green and glimmered and its white spume appeared yellowy in spires and peaks and the troughs of the sea were dark, lurching chasms. And it all stretched, this anarchic, watery violence, to a dim horizon.

‘I hope that glass is thick,’ James said, awed.

Beside him, Richard chuckled. ‘It is. But a storm such as this is a reminder that we live at the mercy of the world. Our lives are grace and favour existences. At least, they are while nature rules us.’

‘Let’s hope she goes on doing so benevolently,’ James said.

‘Nature’s benevolence is a relative thing,’ Richard said. ‘It would not seem benevolent tonight if you were out there in a boat.’

‘But we are not. We’re in here, in comfort and warmth.’

‘And conviviality,’ Richard said, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘And we are behind our goodly landlord’s glass and Charlie Abraham is risk averse and I can assure you that the glass is very thick indeed.’

‘So we can stand here and enjoy the view.’

‘Only at the risk of neglecting my wife,’ Richard said.

James looked back across the bar. Elizabeth Penmarrick did not look terribly neglected. She was standing at the centre of a group of people and looked deeply engaged in conversation with them.

‘Come,’ Richard said. ‘There are several people you should meet.’

The butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker
. That had been Lillian’s phrase about the people she would have expected to populate the Brodmaw Bay of her Chubbly & Cruff book illustrations. He was reminded of it as Richard guided him back to the group. But in truth, none of them looked like tradesmen and when he was introduced to them, none of them was.

Philip Teal was the headmaster of the village secondary school. He looked reassuringly tweedy and wore a grey goatee beard and James estimated was in his late thirties, though he contrived to look older. His school, the Mount, was a co-educational secondary and the one, all being well, Jack would attend. He told James to consult the Ofsted report online if he had any doubts concerning the resources or academic merit of a school in so small a settlement as Brodmaw. Then, with an enthusiasm James thought charming as well as contagious, he talked about the after-school activities the school ran and promoted.

Martin Sharp owned the chandlery. James was frank with him about his own almost complete lack of sailing knowledge or skills. Martin said that the children should be encouraged to learn to sail because the benefits of doing so were considerable in terms of building confidence and independence.

‘And they will enjoy it,’ he said, ‘and so will you.’ Then he cautioned James to consult him before buying a boat from anyone in the locality. ‘I’ll secure you the friends and family discount,’ he said with a wink. Physically, Martin reminded James of a front-row rugby forward. He was warm and friendly, but possessed a stolid power in his thick neck and the broad shoulders above his massive chest.

Angela Heart was the principal of the primary school Olivia would attend. James did not think that she looked very much at all like an educator. She was svelte and stylish in a black pencil skirt and a matching black jacket and crimson lipstick. There was a femme fatale quality to her that seemed somewhat at odds with mixing poster paint and setting homework assignments. She was in her early forties, a few years older than he was, James supposed and the sort of woman he thought most men would be intrigued by. He put the apparent clash between her appearance and occupation down to male prejudice. But he found her green, appraising eyes totally alluring.

The last person he was formally introduced to in the Leeward that evening was Ben Tamworth, owner of the principal building firm in the region. In fact, Richard said, it was the only building firm in the region.

‘Ben will take proper care of all your requirements, should you want or need anything done to Topper’s Reach. That’s assuming of course that you and Lillian take the decision to live there.’

‘I’ll give you a competitive rate on any work you put my way, James.’

James thought this unlikely. Richard had just told him Ben enjoyed a local monopoly. But he did not challenge or contradict what Ben had said. The blue eyes in the builder’s broad, tanned, freckled face looked entirely honest. He did not wish to alienate the man whose workforce might be called out to do emergency repairs on his roof in weather like that currently raging outside. As if to remind him of the fact, there was a volley of thunder then that sang and whined through the pub rafters and made the polished glasses crowning the bar shiver on their shelves.

The butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker
. Later, reminiscing about that evening in the Leeward, James would ponder not on who he had, but on who he had not met. Various people were pointed out to him. There was the boatbuilder, Billy Jasper, florid over a pint among the rest of the morris troupe. There was Michael Carney, a local poet and an authority on the short life and poignant times of Adam Gleason. There was the pharmacist, Rachel Flood, and Bella Worth who edited the
Brodmaw Clarion
.