Dying Art (A Dylan Scott Mystery) (3 page)

Chapter Three

Two dozen neckties hung from the bar in Dylan’s wardrobe, but the black one wasn’t among them. He had a dark blue one that would be okay, but he’d rather find the black one.

He hated funerals, and it felt wrong to be attending one for someone he couldn’t remember. All he had was a very vague recollection of a leggy blond-haired girl. When in Maddie’s company, it had been difficult to notice anyone else, even her sister.

His memories of time spent with Maddie were vivid enough. Most of their time had been spent in bed and he could even picture the room. Dark blue, with a huge smiling sun painted on the ceiling, it had been crammed with clothes. Dozens of scarves and pieces of jewellery had hung from a huge pine mirror on one wall. A mannequin, draped in belts and more scarves, had stood next to the bed.

They must have gone out—to the cinema, for meals or walks—but he was damned if he could remember doing so. She’d shared that flat with two girlfriends who were rarely home, and at weekends, when the flat was theirs and theirs alone, they’d made full use of it.

“You’ll never guess—” Bev came into the bedroom and stopped when she saw the pile of clothes on the bed. “What are you doing with this lot? Packing it? Binning it?”

“I can’t find my black tie. Where the hell can it be?”

She reached in the wardrobe for the tie bar. “It’ll be wherever you left it.”

“Things are always where I’ve left them. Until you come along and move them.”

She looked in drawers that he’d already checked, then rummaged through the wardrobe. There, resting on a suit still hanging in the dry cleaner’s protective cover, was his tie. She handed it to him with a slightly smug expression.

“Thanks.” He folded it carefully and put it in his bag. “What will I never guess?”

“Your mum.” She lowered her voice. “She’s got a new man in her life.”

“God help us. God help him too, whoever he is. How do you know?”

“I just asked her if she fancied a spot of shopping later and she told me she had other plans.” She was still whispering. “She said she’s meeting up with a chap she knew years ago.”

“How does that translate as her having a new man in her life?”

“It just does. She’s very tight-lipped about it.”

He threw shirts and underwear in his bag. “Then let’s hope he whisks her away to the other hemisphere. “That’s it. All done. I’ve got time for a quick coffee before I hit the road.”

He carried his bags down the stairs and there, looking decidedly perky, was his mother. He and Bev had been out to dinner last night so she’d acted as chief babysitter and stayed over, but it was rare for her to be out of bed at this early hour. Dressed in scarlet and yellow, she looked like a moulting parrot. Cheap jewellery dangled from ears, neck and wrists.

“Don’t you have any more colourful clothes, Mum?”

“I do actually.”

As ageing, incurable dope-smoking hippies went, she was one of the best. She rarely wore makeup, and her hair was quite grey now, but he could still see signs of the attractive young woman she’d once been.

Sitting on her lap was his stunningly beautiful daughter and he bent to kiss the top of her head. “Morning, gorgeous.”

Freya clapped her hands and spouted a torrent of gibberish that Bev would swear she could understand.

Bev handed him a coffee. “When do you think you’ll be back?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t know why he was taking the job—or even if he was. Money perhaps. It certainly had nothing to do with wanting to see Maddie again. Nothing at all. “I’ll do the funeral today, talk to a few people tomorrow and then—well, I don’t know. I’ll call you.”

His mother pulled back the curtain and peered out at a sky that seemed to have forgotten what daylight was. “It looks like rain. What an awful day for a funeral.”

“I’ve never known a good day for one,” Dylan said.

“True. But rain makes everything even more miserable. I bet there’ll be a lot of people there. There always are when the dead are so young.”

“Usually,” he said. “Prue only had a small family though and she’d been living abroad for years.”

“What a wicked waste of life.” She sighed. “I hope you catch the evil person responsible, Dylan.”

“Of course he will,” Bev said.

Dylan admired her faith. Maddie was the same, convinced he’d solve the mystery of her sister’s death. He only hoped such belief was justified.

Four days had passed since he’d seen Maddie and he’d tried to remember why they’d split up all those years ago. The sex—Christ, he could remember every hungry breath—but memories of the breakup were less clear. It was as if, one minute, his limbs had been entwined around hers, and the next minute she was nothing to him. He couldn’t remember either of them ending it. He’d gone on a training course, he remembered that, and then nothing. Had that been it? Had it been a case of out of sight, out of mind? The sex had been mind-numbing, Maddie’s hero-worship had fed his ego—why had he let them drift apart?

Not that it mattered now, of course.

Luke, looking half-asleep, ambled into the kitchen.

“Good grief, you’re up early,” Dylan said. “Am I getting a royal send-off?”

“I couldn’t sleep for the noise you lot are making. When will you be back, Dad?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll phone, okay?”

Luke nodded. “You’ll be back for the match on Saturday, won’t you?”

“I certainly will.” He drank his coffee, put his mug on the table and picked up his bags. “Time I was out of here, folks.” He kissed Freya on the top of her head. “Be good, gorgeous.” He was treated to more gibberish. He ruffled Luke’s already untidy hair. “Behave yourself and do your homework.”

Luke pulled a face and grinned. “Yeah. Right.”

He dropped a quick kiss on his mother’s cheek. “Don’t get arrested on a drugs charge.”

She smacked him on the arm. “Get out of here.”

He would have given Bev a quick kiss but she grabbed the lapels of his jacket and clung to him. “Drive carefully, won’t you? Send me a text to let me know you got there safely, and then ring me tonight, okay?”

“Yes, yes and yes.”

She hugged him. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.” He kissed her and moved out of her grasp. “I love you all, but I’m still out of here.”

He had a funeral to attend.

Chapter Four

Wind blew from every direction, carrying with it icy rain.

Dylan stood with Maddie and her husband Tim beneath a poor excuse for an umbrella that Maddie had taken from her bag. It would have struggled to provide protection for a child, never mind three adults. Giant oak trees, dripping above them, added to the misery of the occasion.

Maddie and Prue’s parents, two aunts, and an uncle—who’d had the sense to put a hipflask in his jacket pocket—stood next to them. Maddie’s mother, thin and gaunt, was being supported by her husband. Dylan felt sure she would have snapped in two if it weren’t for her husband’s firm grip on her arm.

A small crowd had gathered but no one seemed sure what to do.

“I suppose we wait here until the hearse arrives,” Maddie said.

Chandler glanced at his watch for the third time in as many minutes. “It shouldn’t be long.”

Tim Chandler was nothing like the man Dylan had expected Maddie to marry. He’d pictured someone disgustingly handsome whose every waking thought was filled with Maddie. She was good pedestal material yet Chandler had barely glanced her way. He wasn’t holding her hand as she waited for the arrival of her sister’s coffin or assuring her that he’d help her through this ordeal. He seemed impatient, as if he longed to be away. Dylan supposed he did. They all did. Who the hell wanted to be at this church on such a grey, wet, windy and depressing day?

Maddie cut a lonely figure. She’d spurned her mother’s attempts at conversation and hadn’t spoken a word to her father. He’d kept his distance from her too. Perhaps she’d made it clear that she preferred to be alone with her grief.

“I bet she didn’t want flowers.” Maddie pointed to several arrangements that had been left by the porch. “I don’t suppose she wanted a funeral like this either. Being buried at sea in one of those do-it-yourself basket affairs would be more to Prue’s taste.”

“We’ve done the best we can,” Chandler said. “She hadn’t made arrangements so there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“Of course she hadn’t made arrangements. Who the hell makes arrangements for their funeral in their thirties?” Maddie rubbed her temples as if she had a migraine.

“I’m sure it will be fine.” Dylan felt obliged to say something and that was the best he could come up with.

More people arrived. He wondered if Prue had known them or if her unwanted spotlight in the media had brought them here out of curiosity. The latter, he guessed, and he was almost glad the weather was so awful. It would keep a lot at home.

He cast his glance over the crowd and wondered if her killer was present.

Dylan wore black as a mark of respect but he was in a minority. The only others wearing black were Maddie, her father and her uncle. Her mother was in grey, the aunts were in navy and Chandler had opted for a grey suit with a blue-and-red tie.

Other people, all of them strangers to Maddie, wore muted colours as they talked and laughed beneath their umbrellas. Slowly, the crowd began to enter the church. One woman, an elderly woman in a dark blue coat, eyed the family with relish as she passed and Dylan supposed she was one of those oddballs who considered a funeral good entertainment.

A young boy stood on the pavement outside the church. He was probably fifteen or sixteen, and was smoking a cigarette as he watched the mourners gather. Dylan guessed he was bunking off school.

“It’s here,” Maddie whispered as a hearse drove up.

Covering the coffin was a large but simple display of white flowers that Dylan assumed was from the family.

The vicar, a tall, slightly bent man, had a few words with Maddie’s parents before giving the pallbearers some final instructions. The coffin was carried inside with the vicar and Prue’s family following.

Dylan waited outside until the last minute and, when he went in and took a seat at the back of the congregation, he was surprised to see the church so crowded. Many must have been inside before he arrived. He did a quick head count and estimated that around a hundred and fifty people had come to this small, bitterly cold church to pay their respects. None looked like killers. Not that he had the vaguest idea what a killer looked like.

When they stood to sing the first hymn, he watched Maddie and her mother, their shoulders taut with tension. Maddie’s lips were moving but he guessed no sound was coming from them. She looked up at the tall, vaulted ceiling. She fixed her gaze on the pulpit. She looked everywhere but at her sister’s coffin.

The service was blessedly short and they were soon braving the wind and rain to walk the five hundred yards to the cemetery. The old stone path was rich with wet slippery moss, and Dylan offered up a quick prayer for the coffin bearers. He was lucky in that he hadn’t attended many funerals but he’d spent every one worrying that someone would drop the coffin. Perhaps it was a premonition of things to come. Maybe his own body would be the one unceremoniously ejected from a dropped coffin.

Only a small proportion of the congregation attended the graveside ceremony but Dylan still risked losing an eye to someone’s umbrella.

His attention was caught by a bearded man watching the proceedings from a distance. Dressed in a long overcoat, the high collar turned up to protect the back of his head from the elements, he was standing beneath a tree, possibly in an attempt to stay dry. Was he watching the ceremony or was he, like Dylan, paying more attention to the crowd of mourners?

Their gazes met for a brief moment.

“Sorry. It’s this damn wind.” A woman standing next to Dylan struggled with an umbrella. A strong gust had blown it inside out. “Typical funeral weather, isn’t it?” she added in a whisper.

“I suppose it is.” Dylan helped to push her umbrella back into place before she took his eye out.

With his companion safely protected from the rain again, Dylan turned to have another look at the bearded stranger, but he’d gone. Vanished. The cemetery only had one exit so he must have walked past Dylan. That was impossible though. It had only taken a few seconds to sort out that umbrella.

Dylan left the mourners and walked away from the cemetery, back to the church and the path to the road. There was no sign of a man with a beard.

He returned to the graveside and waited until only Prue’s immediate family remained. Maddie’s mother was inconsolable, and Dylan’s heart ached for her and her husband. To bury one’s child was unthinkable. To bury that child when the finest medical brains had done all they could was one thing, but to bury that child because someone with absolutely no right had decided it must be so—it was inconceivable.

Chandler nudged his elbow. “Everyone’s going to the Carlton Hotel for a buffet of sorts,” he said, “but I’m afraid I have to get off.”

“Oh?” Standing next to Chandler was a man Dylan didn’t recognise. He was probably the same age as Chandler, mid-forties, but he was shorter and stockier. Several pounds of excess flesh hung over his trousers.

“Sorry, I haven’t introduced you. Dylan, this is Eddie Bryson. Eddie, this is Dylan Scott, the private investigator I told you about.”

The two men shook hands.

“I’m Tim’s business partner,” Bryson explained. “I’ve driven up to meet him so that we can leave for the airport in my car.”

“You’re going to the airport?” Dylan said.

“Yes,” Chandler said. “Business calls, unfortunately. We’re leaving for the Algarve.”

“Business? Sorry, but I’ve forgotten what it is you do. I’m sure Maddie mentioned it, but I can’t remember.”

“Property,” Bryson said. “We deal in time shares, holiday lets, property management. Let me go and offer Maddie my condolences. Won’t be a minute.”

“It’s a damn nuisance,” Chandler said, “and it couldn’t have come at a worse time, but it’s something I can’t get out of.”

“Ah.” There was nothing that Dylan couldn’t have got out of if his wife had needed some support. “Well, I’m sure Maddie will be okay. Her parents, aunts, uncle—I’m sure they’ll take good care of her.”

“Of course they will.” Chandler patted Dylan on the arm. “It’s been good to meet you, Dylan. A pity it was under such difficult circumstances, but perhaps we’ll meet again.”

“Perhaps we will.”

Chandler went back to Maddie, gave her a quick peck on the cheek, hugged his mother-in-law, shook hands with his father-in-law and, with Bryson at his side, headed off with the wind blowing his tie over his shoulder.

A disapproving silence followed him, broken when Maddie spoke. “Sorry, I didn’t ask, Dylan. You will come to the hotel, won’t you? At least we’ll be able to get a sandwich and a stiff drink.”

“I will, yes. Thanks.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes. No. Oh, God knows what I am.” She gave him a wan smile. “I’ll be a lot better once I get a drink inside me.”

A group of around twenty-five, maybe thirty, ended up at the Carlton Hotel. While the others lunged for the sandwiches, he and Maddie headed for the bar.

“There was a chap in the cemetery,” he said as they waited for double whiskies to be poured. “He had a beard. Long overcoat. Any idea who he might have been?”

“No. I didn’t see anyone like that. Why do you ask?”

“No reason in particular. I couldn’t remember seeing him in church and he was standing some distance away from the grave. Thanks.” He broke off to take their glasses from the barman. “Here, drink this. It’ll warm you up.”

“Let’s go through to the conservatory,” she said, slipping her arm through his. “I can’t face anyone yet.”

The Victorian conservatory was dotted with easy chairs and potted ferns. It was also deserted. The front of the hotel stood watch over the town of Dawson’s Clough but here at the back of the building was an uninterrupted view of the moors. Dylan always hated the thought of leaving London and making the long trip north yet, as soon as he arrived, he was amazed all over again by the area’s beauty. Dawson’s Clough was a typical northern town, a mix of old and new where the long-forgotten mills fell into disrepair and shiny new buildings were erected next to them. It was the Pennine Hills surrounding the town that added the touch of magic.

“It’s a nice hotel,” Maddie said, looking round her. “I’m staying until Friday. I could have stayed at Prue’s but I didn’t fancy that. My parents are driving home after this.” She looked wistful.

“You can go with them, can’t you?”

“No. I promised to get the house sorted out. Thankfully, Prue always boasted about being able to travel light so she didn’t have many possessions. I’ve arranged for a man to check out her furniture tomorrow afternoon, and I’m hoping he’ll agree to take it away. Otherwise, I’ll have a bonfire in her back garden.”

“I’ll come round at some point to have a look. I’ll have a word with her neighbours too. The police will have spoken to them, and if they’d seen anything, they would have told them, but it won’t do any harm.”

“Thanks. Her next-door neighbour, Jane, the one with the cat, is the woman with the red hair.” She pointed to where people were clustered round long tables heaving with sandwiches. “I don’t know anyone else. Oh, except the bloke with the ponytail. He was a friend, or so he told me, but I’ve already forgotten his name.”

“Do you want another drink?” Dylan asked.

She seemed surprised to see the empty glass in her hand. “Please. Then I’d better go and mingle.”

“Me too.”

“Everyone thinks you’re a friend of the family,” she said. “I haven’t bothered correcting them.”

It was exactly what Dylan had told anyone who’d asked.

When they had their drinks, Maddie headed off toward her aunts and Dylan helped himself to food. With his plate piled high with chicken legs, sandwiches and slices of pork pie, he went to a table in the middle of the room.

“May I join you?” he asked.

“Of course,” both women replied in unison.

One was Jane Cook, Prue’s neighbour. The other woman was older, probably in her seventies, and Dylan had no idea who she was. They talked about the weather for long tedious minutes.

“It always seems to rain at funerals, doesn’t it?” Jane said.

Dylan nodded and smiled. It didn’t, although it probably always rained at funerals in Lancashire. If it wasn’t raining in Lancashire, it was snowing.

“Is that old yellow car yours?” Jane asked.

“It is, yes.” His car, a stunningly gorgeous 1956 Morgan in Daytona Yellow, had never been so easily dismissed.
That old yellow car.
Dylan despaired.

“There’s nothing wrong with keeping an old one on the road,” she said. “These days, everyone thinks they’re entitled to brand new, don’t they? People should learn to make do. Money doesn’t grow on trees, does it?”

It was far better to despair than to try and explain that his car was a classic, a rare classic.

“Were you and Prue friends?” he asked, getting to more important matters.

“Yes,” Jane said. “We can’t claim to have known her well because she only moved in to the street last November. We’re neighbours, you see. I live next door to her. Doreen—” she nodded at her companion, “—lives across the road.”

“I fell on a patch of ice and sprained my wrist just before Christmas,” Doreen said, “and Prue saw me when I came back from the hospital. We’d only said hello a couple of times before that, but, seeing the state I was in, she went and got my shopping, put my bin out for me and did all sorts of things. That girl would do anything for anyone. How someone could—well, it’s wicked, isn’t it? Evil.”