Fairwood (a suspense mystery thriller) (9 page)

Susie shrugged indifferently.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?”

She didn’t answer.

“Are you out by yourself?” Pandora wondered. “Where are your friends?”

“I don’t have any.”

“Oh.” Pandora could empathise, as a little girl she spent most of her playtime by herself. She would play with her dolls, ride her bikes, watch her television and play her computer games without the company of kids her own age. She was shy, a cautious only child who suffered under her parents’ distant and protective hands and didn’t know how to function around the children who were allowed to stay out late and owned the latest toys and games. “That’s a shame,” she said softly. “What about your parents, your mum and dad?”

“What about them?” the girl asked simply.

“Are they around?”

“My mum is at home. I don’t have a dad.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

Pandora frowned, gave a gentle shrug of her shoulders. “I don’t know. It’s just that, well, it must be hard not having a dad.”

The little girl didn’t answer. She looked Pandora up and down, concentrating on her beautiful eyes , studying her features in detail. She felt like she was under the studious and knowing gaze of a doctor or a psychiatrist. She became uneasy on her feet, in her own skin.

“
It is
,” the little girl said eventually. She lifted her feet, gave Pandora one last bland stare and then pedalled away, her legs working methodically as the pushbike crept out of sight along the empty street.

***

The shopkeeper eyed Dexter as soon as he entered. He was a hunched, haggard old man with tired eyes and failing skin that drooped off his neck like a punctured football. He looked ready for death, not just because of his dwindling years -- the reaper was certainly around the corner -- but because of an attitude that suggested he was ready, that he had given up on the few things life had left for him and was ready to bid it farewell with one last cynical sneer.

Dexter didn’t even try to acknowledge him with a friendly greeting. It always paid to be friendly, especially when you needed the world on your side, but with some people it wasn’t worth the effort.

The shop looked like a newsagents but there were no newspapers or magazines, a relief for Dexter who didn’t have to wonder if the grumpy old git behind the counter was waiting to supply the town with pictures of him and Pandora at their worst.

A scattering of items littered the shelves. Dorothy said this was where the locals did their shopping, this little hovel that was barely big enough to hold its sour-faced owner and his antique till, was where they all came to acquire life’s essentials. They stocked stacks of toilet paper in the corner, like bales of hay in a farmer's field. Crates of pop, juice, water and milk sat in the other corner -- Dexter had to be careful to avoid standing on them when he scoured the shelf, reaching up to pluck some chocolate bars and a couple of packets of crisps.

He didn’t crack a smile when he laid the items down on the counter, wasn’t expecting the old man to talk to him.

“Pretty woman you have there,” he said in a voice that crackled like an out of tune radio. He nodded his head towards the window, through which Dexter could see Pandora’s shadow as she stood in the sunlight.

He let a curious expression cross his face but didn’t reply to the old man. There was something sinister behind his grey eyes.

“You want to keep an eye on her,” he pushed, not making a move to tally the items on the counter.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The grey eyes bore through him. A soft cackle spilled out of his thin blue lips; a smile curled half of his face like a cruel stroke.

Dexter held his stare, shook it off. He looked down at the items on the till, raised his eyebrows to indicate them.

The old man put his hands -- skeletal specimens poorly wrapped in loose fitting skin -- flat in front of him, slapping the counter with a hollow, fleshy thud. They trembled as they moved with an arthritic stutter across the counter; Dexter began to feel sorry for him, seeing the struggle and the pain he suffered.

The wrinkled hands violently shoved into the crisps and chocolate, forcing them away. They tipped off the edge, spilled around Dexter's feet. The old man snarled like a hairless pit-bull, spat a stuttering snigger that seemed to rise through his entire decrepit body before cackling out of his throat.

“Take your goods and fuck off.”

Dexter held the sinister gaze, felt weakened in its grasp. He ducked out of sight to pick up the items, stuffing them into his pocket. When he returned, an annoyed rebuttal on his lips, the old man had turned around. His hunched back, clad in a cardigan that clung tight enough for his protruding spine to poke through, faced Dexter.

He swallowed his words, gave the old man’s back a sneer of his own. He left a few coins on the counter, more than the goods were worth -- the least worthy tip he’d ever given -- and left the shop, keeping his frustration to himself.

10

Cawley was hit by the musty stench of piss when Mrs Barnes opened the door. He flashed his badge, struggled to tell her his name whilst trying to hold his breath.

“I’ve been expecting you,” she told him with a sinister and gleeful smile on her cadaverous face.

He rolled his eyes, stuffed his wallet back in his pocket and took a step backwards, keen to avoid the smell. He wasn’t sure if it was coming from her or from her house, but he was sure it was more criminal than anything she was waiting to tell him. If he could he would arrest her for assaulting a police officer with a disgusting smell, or for the intention to incite vomit, because when she grinned at him -- exposing rows of yellow teeth, wedged into blackened gums like burnt-out and boarded windows on a dilapidated tenement -- he felt the need to unleash the contents of his stomach.

He hadn’t exactly rushed to the crazy old woman as he told his superior he would. He stopped off for breakfast first: two fried eggs, three slices of bacon and a slice of dripping fried bread, all swimming in a pool of grease and tinned tomatoes. The owners at the local cafe were happy to give him the extra portions, perhaps thinking that if they didn’t he would arrest them for cooking up heart attacks in kitchens where only men in Hazmat suits should venture. They didn’t like him, they were all smiles and greetings on the surface
but, underneath that, he felt an air of distrust, sensing that they were on edge because of their poor food hygiene, the stacks of pirated DVDs, snuff films, drugs or whatever they kept hidden away in their one-bedroom flat above the cafe. They probably spat in his food as well, he didn’t care; the saliva would be neutralised by the oil, the fat or the e-coli.

“Come in,” Mrs Barnes said, stepping aside.

He smiled, burped a noxious waft of fry-up fumes into his hand. “I’d rather not,” he said softly.

She gave him a curious and suspicious look. “I’ll make us a cup of tea,” she said, as if to sweeten the deal.

He had every intention of letting her waste his time inside her hovel, but he hadn’t remembered the smell. The last time he’d been to her house was a few years ago when she said she’d been burgled, apparently by the least picky burglar in the world. She hadn’t lost anything, but was sure that she had one less useless pile of shit than she usually had. The smell wasn’t so bad then, but it had been putrefying ever since.

“No thanks,” he said, taking another step away from her.

She looked both offended and suspicious, as if unable to work out his refusal, like he had just passed up the opportunity to bed a twenty-one year old supermodel with tits the size of his head.

She folded her arms, leant against the doorframe. She poked her head out, looked this way and that -- Cawley took another step back when he saw something move in her hair -- and then looked at Cawley with eyes that suggested she knew something that he didn’t: possibly the source of the rancid smell, but he doubted she even knew it existed.

“I know where they are.” Her rotten breath hissed into the wind.

“Really?” Cawley said, trying to feign enthusiasm but dealing exactly the amount of sarcasm that he felt.

She nodded, oblivious to just how little he cared. “I saw them.”

Cawley nodded and tried to look interested. He regretted paying a visit to the crazy woman. It was still better than sitting in his office, doors away from his bitchy boss and her bitchier orders, but only just. He needed a break; he needed to get away from things for a while; away from his wife, from his boss, from his job. He hoped that he could catch the bandits and feel alive again, feel like he wasn’t just a worthless piece of shit in a pointless machine, but there was no chance of that. They’d already gone, onto another district, another country maybe, everything he did from now on was just routine, until the bandits were caught and he went back to arresting delinquent kids and drunken idiots.

“They were out at Rosie’s Point,” she told him, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one else had heard.

He perked up a bit, furrowed his brow. Rosie’s Point was just around the corner from Stubbies. It was a barren stretch of land stuck between a rundown farm and a tiny village; a peak of muddied ground that overlooked a steep dip into a marshy moor. It used to be blocked off with a roadside barrier to keep the kids away, but the same kids ripped the barrier to pieces, made makeshift sleds out of the resulting debris and used them to slide down the bumpy, grassy terrain, all the way to the woodland at the bottom which was intersected by a quiet stream -- long ago filled with the modern refuse of shopping trolleys, bikes and other detritus -- before climbing up and starting again. A number of years ago a twelve year old girl named Rosie Fairbanks had been playing on the land when her makeshift sled hit a tuft at the bottom and propelled her into a tree trunk, breaking her neck. It didn’t really have a name before that, but everyone knew its name afterwards. The barriers were removed; the kids stopped playing.

“You were at Rosie’s Point?”

She nodded firmly, knowing she had his interest and that her value to him had just increased.  “I take my dogs out there.”

He hadn’t seen a dog, hadn’t heard one bark when he knocked on the door. If she did have dogs then they were the quietest dogs he’d ever encountered.

“That’s a long walk from here,” he said suspiciously.

“They need the exercise. It does them good.”

He wasn’t convinced. On foot, Rosie’s Point was at least a forty-five minute trek. She was crazy, but he doubted she would go that far out of her way. There were plenty of parks and fields nearby, she didn’t need to travel to Rosie’s Point to give the dogs some exercise.
If
she had any dogs.

“Okay,” he nodded. It was a coincidence, nothing more. If he had another witness who had seen the bandits near Stubbies he would have had something to go off, but one anonymous tip, one dodgy bar owner and one crazy cat lady with some non-existent dogs, wasn’t enough, not when the whole country was claiming to know the fugitives. “Thanks for that. I’ll get in touch if I need anything else.”

“That’s it?” she looked disappointed, she took a few steps out of her door as he made to move away. For a moment he worried that she was going to follow him and stink up his car.

“Sure. Thanks for all your help.” He moved quickly, didn’t want to wait around for more questions. She had done what he needed her to do, she’d bought him some time, in which he’d been able to have some terrible food and suffer some terrible smells. Now he had to return to work, to his terrible boss.

11

The path that Dorothy suggested they take took them around the back of town, through a wash of green that decorated the bountiful landscape. It was like a different country, a land far removed, rather than a little town on the outskirts of Yorkshire.

They viewed the town from the back, taking a path that overlooked the backs of a line of houses. They were separated from the back gardens by a tall wooden fence, through the slits of which they could see the peaceful, well maintained gardens.

A young boy watched them from the second floor window of one of the houses. He was standing by the window as if waiting for them to pass. He stared at them, didn’t flicker when they smiled, didn’t falter when Pandora gave him a wave.

“Why is everyone here so creepy?” she asked Dexter as they passed, keeping her voice low.

Dexter shrugged. “We’re outsiders, I guess,” he reasoned. “This is the sort of place where everybody knows everybody else's business. They don’t welcome strangers.”

“You’d think they’d need us,” Pandora noted. “We could probably dilute their gene pool a bit, phase out a bit of that inbreeding.”

Dexter grinned at her,
and then gestured for her to be silent, nodding towards the fence. They were out of sight from the little boy in the window but, a few houses down, through the slits in the fence, they saw the face of a young woman watching them, her rosy skin and her blonde hair visible as she poked her face close to the wood.

“Hello there!” Dexter said loudly, letting her know she’d been seen.

He expected her to back away shyly, to apologise or make up an excuse, but she didn’t move. Pandora gave her a smile as well, flashed another little wave, but still the woman didn’t budge.

“Creepy,” Pandora hissed under her breath, lowering her eyes to the floor self-consciously as they passed the staring woman.

“We’re new,” Dexter said when they’d left the muddy path that stretched the length of the fence. They crossed onto a pre-trodden path of grass, a shortcut to a river that ran silently ahead of them; its thin, weaving banks set deep in the lush green landscape, snaking off into the distance. “Give them time.”

“I will,” Pandora said brightly. “I like it here, don’t get me wrong. It’s creepy, but it’s peaceful and Dorothy more than makes up for all the weirdoes.”

Dexter nodded. “I used to live not too far from a village like this,” he told her. “In fact the village was where we went for some excitement.”

Pandora grinned teasingly. “Sad, sad man.” she said slowly.

“Yep.”

“What did you do for fun?”

He shrugged. “We used to spend our pocket money at the local shop, on sweets mostly. Hide and seek. Maybe ride our bikes--”

“Penny farthings?”

He gave her a displeased frown. “We had proper bikes.”

“And what about on a night time,” she pushed, a slyness in her smile. “When all the chores were done. Did you all gather around the radio, play some cards?”

He gave an amused nod. “Actually, we played a lot of cards.”

“You were a kid in dire need of a Gameboy.”

They stood by the river, watched the clean water rock gently by.

“Should we go to this quiz thing tonight?” Pandora wondered, suddenly solemn as she stared at her reflection in the water.

“I don’t see why not.”

“Lot of people there, lot of chances to get noticed.”

“I don’t think anyone here will notice us.”

She turned to him, bemused. “What makes you say that?”

“Have you noticed any newspapers, any televisions?”

She gave it a brief thought. She had only been inside the bed and breakfast, but had seen nothing of the sort. It was standard to equip rooms with televisions these days, they had stayed in some cheap, rundown places over the last few weeks and even
they
had televisions in the room. It was implausible that an establishment as big as Dorothy’s wouldn’t have one.