Flesh And Blood (18 page)

‘Yes,’ Siobhan said when he asked. ‘That’s Lyns.’

There were pictures of the three of them as a trio, singly or in pairs – laughing, making faces at the camera, miming tears. Siobhan with fingers at the corners of her mouth, stretching it wide; Lynsey poking out her tongue. Silly hats, badges, garish clothes. Three girls, three young women having the times of their lives.

‘Do you still see a lot of her?’ Elder asked. ‘Lynsey.’

‘I did. Until about a year ago. She met this bloke who does stand-up and followed him back to Canada. Toronto.’ She smiled. ‘Not the end of the earth, just seems it.’

‘You miss her?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘You’ve not been over? To visit.’

Siobhan looked at him. ‘You know what it’s like, when you think you know someone really well; they’re your best, your closest friend, and then they fall for someone who seems to epitomise everything you thought you both despised? And you think how could they? And then, after a while, you start to think perhaps you never really knew them that well at all.’

When she finished speaking Elder thought she was close to tears, certainly upset.

‘You want some more coffee? I think there’s a little left in the pot.’

While she was out of the room, Elder traced back through the album. In one photograph, mid close-up, Susan Blacklock was looking directly at the camera, serious yet smiling. Beautiful, Elder thought. For that moment. Beautiful.

‘Who took this?’ he asked when Siobhan came back into the room.

‘I’m not sure. It could have been… well, it could have been anyone… but I’d say Mr Latham, probably.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Oh, the way she’s standing, you know, like it’s a proper photograph. Not just another snap.’

‘She liked him then, Latham?’

‘Of course she did. We all liked him. Adored him, practically.’

‘You fancied him?’

Siobhan laughed out loud. ‘Not in a million years.’

‘Why not?’

‘You just didn’t.’

‘Because he was a teacher?’

‘God, no. It wasn’t that. Lyns and I both had this thing about Selvey, taught maths. We’d follow him around, hide notes inside his register, phone him at home sometimes. Sit around late at night talking about him, what it would be like, you know… The pain of it was he was knocking off this slapper in the lower sixth all the time. All came out when she got pregnant, took an overdose and had to be pumped out, lost the baby. She works in Marks now, Sheffield. I bump into her from time to time when I go home.’

‘And the man? Selvey?’

‘Changed schools. Deputy head somewhere in Derbyshire, that’s what we heard. Inspector of schools by now, most likely.’

Elder closed the album and rested it against the back of the settee. ‘So if Paul Latham wasn’t out of bounds as it were, in your imaginations at least…’

‘Why didn’t any of us fancy him? I think we were all sure he was gay at first. You know, drama, dressing up. All that flapping of hands. Exaggeration.’

‘But he wasn’t?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t think he was anything really. Sexually, I mean.’

‘He’s not married.’

‘He wasn’t then. Not unless he kept her hidden in the attic. He had this cottage a little way out of town, on the way to Matlock. Everything just so. You could have eaten your dinner off the floor.’

‘You went there, obviously?’

‘He had a summer party, every year.’

‘And that was all?’

‘Lynsey and I went over a few times with a couple of the others, after rehearsals. Just, you know, chilling out.’

‘And Susan?’

‘She might have been with us once or twice, yes, probably was.’

‘How about on her own? Do you know if she ever went there on her own?’

Siobhan was shaking her head, amusement vying with surprise. ‘You think they were having an affair, don’t you? Susan and Paul.’

‘Isn’t it possible?’

‘No.’

‘Can you be sure?’

‘Even if she hadn’t said – and she would, girls don’t keep that kind of stuff to themselves, secretive or not – don’t you think one of us would have noticed something, spending all that time together? After school, weekends, being shaken around in the damned minibus.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘Anyway, as I say, he wasn’t the type. The two of them – it doesn’t make sense.’

Elder remembered what she’d said about her best friend falling for a Canadian comic but chose not to remind her. ‘What about the boys in the group,’ he said, ‘is it possible she had a crush on one of those?’

Siobhan reached for the album. ‘This couple here, denim jackets and jeans, they were gay. Not quite out but not exactly in the closet either.’ She laughed, remembering. ‘Not till they came to the end-of-year party tarted up like twin versions of Boy George. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind betting they’re married now, kids, mortgage, the whole bit.’ She cocked her wrist and attempted a Kenneth Williams voice. ‘Just a phase, love. Just a phase.’ Laughing. ‘Someone we were going through.’

The laughter merged with a small fit of coughing, for which she apologised. Pulling herself together, she indicated one of the photographs.

‘Now Rob there, Rob Shriver, he was the heartthrob of the bunch if anyone, but he’d been dating Linda Fairburn since year three. D’you know they’re married with three kids, still together, happy as the proverbial in some mock-Georgian paradise in Macclesfield. Every Christmas I get this chain letter along with photos of the children. You know, those dreadful things in flimsy card frames, kids saying cheese in their school uniforms. Enough to make you throw up. Except it’s sweet, really.’

‘How about him?’ Elder asked, pointing towards a tall lad with longish hair and rimless spectacles, standing to Susan’s left.

‘Stephen. Stephen Makepiece Bryan. Our tame intellectual. Read Brecht every day before breakfast. Reckoned Mozart and Jimi Hendrix were God. Gods. And Shakespeare, of course. But, no, come to think of it, he and Susan got on pretty well. Both only children, I think that was part of it. And she did go with him to a concert once. Something classical. I can remember Lyns and I teasing her about it. But for all that, I don’t think there was anything, you know, physical. Stephen was probably too much in love with himself to waste it on others.’

‘Do you ever hear from him, Stephen?’

‘No, but I think Rob and Linda do, I could give you their number if you like. Or why don’t you try that site on the web – Friends Reunite, is that what it’s called? He might be listed on there.’

‘Okay, thanks. Maybe I’ll do that. Now, I should be going. I’ve taken enough of your time.’

Siobhan made a mock bow. ‘My lord, ’tis mine to give withal.’

‘Shakespeare again?’

‘Walkers crisps commercial, more like. Let me get you that number and then I’ll come down to the door.’

The sky had clouded over a little and offered the possibility of rain. Things change.

‘You don’t recall anything about getting back late from a theatre trip to Newcastle?’ Elder asked. ‘The minibus breaking down. A puncture.’

Siobhan thought then shook her head. ‘Not specially. That sort of thing happened all the time.’

‘This would have been really late. Three or four in the morning.’

‘No, sorry. The only thing special I can remember happening at Newcastle, we drove all the way to see the National’s
Lear
and the safety curtain got stuck. They had to abandon the whole performance.’

‘You don’t know when this was? I mean exactly?’

‘No. I’m sorry.’

Elder took a step away. ‘Thanks again for the coffee. And the chat.’

‘I enjoyed it.’

‘Take care, then.’

Elder raised a hand and set off down the street. At the corner of the square he checked his watch, thought about the times of the trains home and quickened his pace. Home, a funny word to use. A rented room and little beyond his clothes and a few books that were his own. Was he going back down to Cornwall when all this was over, and if not what exactly was he intending to do? Where was he going to go?

For now St Pancras would do.

One step at a time.

If it hadn’t been for the car, Gerald Kersley would never have gone to the police at all. Debit and credit cards he could get stopped, the cash he could spare. But an almost-new Renault Vel Satis without a scratch on its satin finish… there was no way he could claim on the insurance without officially reporting the loss.

The uniformed officer at the local station noted down the details laboriously.

‘And when you stopped at the park, sir, to use the Gents, that was at approximately a quarter past?’

‘Yes.’

‘Less than half an hour after you’d left home?’

‘Curry I’d had last night, I was caught short, you know how it is.’

‘Yes, sir. Of course,’ the officer said. The park toilets were a well-known haunt for cottaging, something the police were mostly happy to turn a blind eye to, other than when some virtuous citizen rousted the chief constable with a complaint.

‘And you left the car for how long, sir? Ten minutes?’

‘Less. Much less. Five at most.’

‘So whoever took the car was pretty swift, knew what he was about…’

‘They do, don’t they?’

‘There isn’t any way you might have accidentally left the keys in the car?’

‘Good God, no. I’m not a fool.’

‘No, sir.’ The officer doing his best not to smirk.

It was found a day later, wrapped around a lamppost south of Stockport. Shane Donald had managed to get himself lost, got turned around and ended up driving south-east out of Manchester instead of south-west as he’d intended. Giving it some welly along a rare stretch of open road he’d had to swerve to avoid a post van and lost control. A few bumps and bruises and a cut to the forehead aside, he’d got out of it lightly, grabbed his bag and legged it, slightly limping, away.

Half an hour or so later, Donald then stumbled upon a rare piece of luck, a small travelling fair setting up on a patch of waste ground, dodgems and an antique Whirlatilter, a few roundabouts and sundry stalls, a large inflatable slide which small children scrambled up with the aid of criss-crossed ropes, before rolling and tumbling noisily down, shrieking all the way. Five goes for two pounds, no adults or shoes allowed.

Donald wandered around until he got into conversation with the man who seemed to be in charge, bragged a little about his past experience and was set on, collecting money at the base of the slide, a task he shared with a surly Croatian, turn and turn about.

His hair cut short and from a distance looking almost bald, Donald could have been any young man between nineteen and thirty, only the plaster over his cut forehead to distinguish him from the rest. What resemblance he had to the photographs that had so far appeared in the newspapers was negligible at best.

It was towards the end of that first day, evening really, lights on all around, the sweet burnt smell of onions from the hot-dog stall, that he noticed the girl standing at the centre of the six-sided darts stall. Score fifty and over to win a prize, no doubles, bull’s-eye counts twenty, own darts not allowed. She stood blinking out, her skin purplish in the coloured neon light, surrounded by soft toys and stetson hats, a set of darts with green flights in her hand.

‘You wanna go?’

Donald shrugged his shoulders, shook his head. He had been hovering around the stall for quarter of an hour now, maybe more. Wandered off and come back with a bag of sugared doughnuts, stood around some more.

‘Come on, have a go, why don’t you? I’m not gonna charge, am I?’

There was an accent of some kind in her voice, not strong, vaguely northern. He set the doughnut bag down and accepted the darts from her hands. They were light, of course, as he knew they would be, the centres drilled out. All but impossible to aim. He scored seventeen and she offered him a teddy bear, pale orange, button eyes and a black thread mouth. Instead of refusing he said thanks and tucked it down inside his belt.

‘Here,’ he said, holding out the bag dark now with grease. ‘Have one of these.’

She had a silver stud, he could see now, small, to the left of her nose. Her hair was clipped short. When she bit into the doughnut, sugar freckled her upper lip.

‘My name’s Angel,’ she said. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Shane.’

There were small gangs of youths roaming around, shouting and pushing at each other, drinking out of cans. When one of their number, having failed to get two out of three darts to as much as stick into the board, started mouthing off at Angel, calling her a cheating cunt and more, Donald faced him down and told him to move on and, to his surprise, the youth, after offering to punch him out so as not to back down in front of his mates, did exactly that.

‘Thanks,’ Angel said. ‘But you needn’t’ve bothered. I get that all the time on here. And worse.’

‘’Sall right,’ Donald said.

When the fair closed down around two, he finished cashing up at the slide and came back to help her pack away, bolt down the sides.

‘Thanks,’ she said again.

‘’Sokay.’

‘You smoke?’ she asked.

‘Yeah. Why not?’

Angel rolled a narrow spliff, struck a match and got it going, then passed it across. They walked over to a small incline at the edge of the site and sat down.

‘Where you staying? You staying here or what?’

Donald shrugged. ‘Thought I’d scrounge a blanket, kip down on the ground. ’Snot cold.’

She accepted the spliff back from him, held the smoke in her mouth and then drew it down into her lungs. She was not long out of school, Donald guessed. Sixteen. Seventeen.

‘How about you?’ Donald asked.

Angel pointed over towards one of a small cluster of caravans. ‘I’m sharing with Della. She sort of took me in. Few months back now. She’s okay.’