Read Sonata of the Dead Online

Authors: Conrad Williams

Sonata of the Dead (3 page)

BOOK: Sonata of the Dead
5.44Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

‘Mrs Gower?’ I said.

‘Yes.’ Her face creased with faint recognition. I felt the same way. I might have traded pleasantries with her from the car as Sarah jumped in or Martin jumped out. I might have waved once or twice.

‘My name’s Joel. You won’t remember but—’

‘Joel Sorrell! Sarah’s dad. Of course.’

‘You do remember.’

‘I’m good with faces,’ she said, and Martin’s own flashed horribly across my mind. ‘Come in. What can I do for you? How’s Sarah?’

I followed her into an expansive, brightly lit tiled hallway. A staircase led off to the right, carpeted in something that looked as soft as sable. A glass-topped table was covered in framed photographs.
Hello again, Martin
. There was a vase of white lilies. I had to just throw it out there. Nip the chit-chat in the bud and get her life ruined right now so she could begin to recover.

‘Martin is dead, Mrs Gower. He was found this morning, just a short distance from here, near the golf course.’

She was looking at me as if she’d discovered that I wasn’t Joel Sorrell after all, but an imposter who had somehow inveigled his way into her house on false pretences. She kept looking back over her shoulder at the kitchen.

‘Do you mind?’ she said, and her voice was thinning by the syllable. ‘Only the rhubarb will catch.’

I followed her to the kitchen. I could see through the patio windows into the garden where a man in a pastel-pink Ralph Lauren polo shirt and steel-coloured hair – Mr Gower… Tom, as I recalled – was emptying a wheelbarrow of grass cuttings on to a compost heap. Mrs Gower – June? Joan? Joan – took a simmering pan off the hob. The hot, sweet, acidic smell of it filled the room.

She looked at me levelly, a hard look. She reminded me of someone agonising over a tough question on
Mastermind
. Very carefully, she said: ‘Martin is due back any minute. He was at a friend’s house last night.’

‘The police will be here shortly, Joan,’ I said.

‘In fact, he might even have slipped in while I was outside with his dad.’

She wasn’t listening. She wasn’t accepting it. This wasn’t going the way I’d planned, but then why would it? What did I really expect? A tear in the eye, a thank you and an invitation to have a poke through his things? At least she wasn’t screaming. At least I was still here.

We went up the stairs to an empty bedroom. Posters on a wall: Jimi, Kurt, Eric. A stack of PlayStation games. A stack of music magazines. How old was Martin? Twenty? Twenty-one? His room was pretty sparse. Perhaps he was in the process of moving out. I spotted the kind of things that stand out: a karate kit with a purple belt, a Teeline shorthand course book, a guitar, boxes of photographs. I wondered if any more shots of Sarah resided within them. I itched to search.

What I’d said seemed to catch up with Joan. She sagged on to the bed. A deep, agonised wail sounded from deep inside her, animalistic, ineluctable. I should not have been there. As soon as Tom came in I would be through the door, possibly before it had a chance to open. I did not have much time but I didn’t know what I meant to do. The karate gear and guitar meant contacts I could interview: presumably he trained at a local dojo; maybe he was in a band. The Teeline shorthand book suggested he was maybe training to be a journalist, presumably at a college or university nearby. There would be something I could dig into regarding his photography. There was action to be taken.

Joan was sobbing into his pillow now. Maybe she could smell his scalp on it.

‘Joan,’ I said. ‘Has Sarah been in touch? Has Sarah been here?’

But I was locked out. She was cocooned within her son. I heard the patio doors skid shut downstairs. I heard the roar of a tap.

On top of a cupboard lay a stack of notebooks. I skimmed through them. Photography stuff in the main: film speeds, apertures, timings. A purist then. No digital exposures for Martin Gower. Maybe that extended to his appointments. And yes, here was a diary.

Feet on the stairs. Tom calling Joan’s name.

I riffled the pages. Nothing in the previous day’s space. No mention of Sarah. He hadn’t entered any information in the names and addresses section. There wasn’t much of anything, actually. Except, once a month, a single word: ACCELERANTS.

‘Who are you?’ Tom came into the bedroom, the glass of water in his fist. No recognition here. He looked from me to Joan and then back again.

‘Joel Sorrell,’ I said. The name seemed to make no impact on him. But he was no longer listening. His wife was crying. A stranger was standing nearby.

‘I’m calling the police,’ he said.

‘He
is
the police,’ Joan cried at him, lifting her head from the pillow.

‘Actually—’ I began, but Joan was clawing her way towards her husband, her face slicked with tears and snot.

‘Martin,’ she said. ‘MARTIN!’

Tom was shaking his head. Water from the glass sloshed over the rim. He didn’t notice. ‘What about Martin?’

‘He’s dead,’ Joan managed, the words struggling out of her as if they were barbed wire snagging in her throat.

Tom dropped the glass. He went to Joan and held her. He didn’t take his eyes off me.

‘Sarah Sorrell,’ I said. ‘Have you seen her? Did Martin—’

‘Get out,’ Tom said. His lips were drawn back from his teeth. He was shaking. He was shaking so hard I thought he was having convulsions.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

The doorbell rang when I was halfway down the stairs. I didn’t answer it, and went out through the patio doors at the back. I hurried down the garden and skipped over the fence. I jogged along the train tracks until I hit a road and followed it round to where I’d left the car.

I was on Spaniards Road, gunning through Hampstead Heath, when Mawker called to give me holy hell.

3

I picked up a litre of Grey Goose on the way home. I had maybe three inches left in the bottle in my freezer, but today was a four-inch kind of day. Mengele was laying in wait for me when I got in, pouncing on my leg like a furrier, more tuna-scented version of Cato. I let him bully me for a while until there was a real danger of him reopening some of his previously administered wounds, and poured him some Fishbitz. I carried the bottle and a shot glass and went out on to the balcony where I got on with the serious business of destroying my internal organs. The heat of the day had been captured by the floor tiles and I kicked off my shoes and enjoyed the warmth in my feet. I could hear the buzz of early evening traffic. In the windows of flats opposite I could see people sitting down for meals or TV or, like me, a restorative gill or two. I poured. I tossed it back. The vodka shot was a syrup slug of iced purity; I held it still on my tongue for a few moments and then let it roll down my throat. Cold became heat. I closed my eyes.

We used to have a bush in the back garden at Lime Grove. Dianthus. It produced red flowers with attractive grey-blue grassy leaves. You’d smell it on summer evenings when we sat outside with a glass of something, watching the Tube trains clatter over the tracks above the roofs of Shepherd’s Bush market. It had a spicy smell about it.

Whenever she’d been naughty Sarah would pick one of the flowers and leave it by the bedside. She never confessed to this, but I’d seen her doing it once or twice. I smelled that flower now, across the years, as if some old, dying pocket of my mind had cruelly opened up to let me in.

I wondered how close I’d come to finding a path to Sarah. Somewhere in Gower’s house, in a notebook or on a computer file, was a phone number or an address that might lead me to her. Martin Gower. Childhood sweethearts. I’d never thought to consider childhood friends as possible sources of information. How many of us retain the relationships we built at school? I tried to think of the other kids Sarah had been friends with but couldn’t for the life of me dredge up any names. I guessed Sarah wasn’t the kind of person to use social networking sites because I’d tried any number of them without success, both with my surname and Peart, her mother’s. But that didn’t mean her old friends didn’t populate them. I made a note to ransack my brain for names, or contact the schools she’d attended.

I tried to push her from my mind, just for a while, but it was easier said than done. She was like Long John Silver infecting the dreams of Jim Hawkins, albeit in a much less frightening way. And then I thought about Martin Gower and how his parents would be plagued with thoughts of their son, and which version of events I’d rather have. I poured another shot to help blot out the vision of Gower’s face, like so many rough leaves of bacon on a slicer. Whoever had done for him was committed. He wanted to make a statement. And this was not his first. Or if it was, it would not be his last.

Mawker’s voice drifted through my thoughts. It had been punched around and exhausted by this murder. You could hear it in the empty threats. I’d accepted the caution without argument and told him I was sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight. Sarah, and all that. He came round, a little, but only because he thought he might be able to benefit from my knowledge.

‘You know what I know,’ I told him.

‘What about this Accelerants thing?’ he asked. ‘Any ideas?’

‘What did Joan and Tom say?’

‘Not a lot. They didn’t have much to do with their son. He was out a lot. Busy, busy, busy. Click-click. Kick-kick, karate chop. Press passes and arpeggios. He was about to move. Shared flat in Crowthorne Road. Him and two other guys.’

‘Names?’

‘What have you done for me lately?’

‘Well I was thinking the Accelerants might be a band. Maybe he’s moving in with the bass player and drummer.’

‘Owning a guitar does not turn you into Bob Dylan.’

‘Well, he was musical when I knew him,’ I said. ‘At school, I mean. I dropped him off once after guitar practice.’

‘He might not have kept it up. I ditched the cornet after six weeks.’

‘Says the man who is so fond of blowing his own trumpet.’

‘Funny, Joel. You’re such a funny fellow. My ribs are on fire whenever you’re around.’

‘Anyway, you might want to follow that up. Local music venues. Pubs, clubs. See if they’ve done any gigs. Any more photographs I might be interested in? In those boxes of his?’

‘Not as yet,’ Mawker said. ‘I’ll let you know. Mainly wanky black-and-white stuff. Wet landscapes. Black crows on rotting fence posts. Woe-is-me junk.’

‘So are you going to let me in on these Crowthorne Road posers or what?’

‘No, I’m not. You’ve been formally cautioned. Stick your wanger through the letterbox one more time and I’ll chop it off. If anything relating to Sarah crops up, I’ll let you know.’

‘I’d rather there was some
looking for
instead of
cropping up
.’

‘Yeah, well, this is a murder inquiry, not a search for a woman who is apparently alive and well, an adult holding a grudge against her dickhead father. Butt out, Joel. You’re a very lucky boy. Tom Gower wanted to press charges. He could take legal action against you. And he’d win.’

I bit my lip wishing I could bite his lip, drank the vodka and put down the glass and the phone. I’d got a decent buzz on, fast. I needed it. I opened the glassine bag. Versions of her slid out on to the table. My daughter. My baby. Very pink. Very shiny. Sarah Grace Sorrell. Born 6 September 1999. In one of the photographs – presumably before Gower (or
she
, for fuck’s sake) suggested she become fully naked – she wore a pale green T-shirt and black knickers. Her hair was swept back off her face and tied into pigtails. Her fingernails were blood red.

In the nude photograph she had a tattoo, some cursive text I couldn’t make out, inked under her left breast. A navel piercing. Her right ear was punched through with half a dozen steel loops. No props. No clues in the backdrop: a featureless brick wall. There was nothing on the back of the photos, either. Except for one: a date three weeks ago and the words ‘SLX sesh’.

What was SLX? A kind of camera? Sesh, presumably, was session. I found myself praying to a god I didn’t believe in that he hadn’t just misspelled SEX.

Why did he have this set of photographs on him when he died? Was he on his way to meet Sarah, maybe, in order to show her? Or was he on his way back? Surely he would have let her keep these prints if he had the negatives. Maybe she hated them. I sure as shit did. But that would be another reason for Sarah to keep them. So if he was on his way somewhere – neatly dressed, man bag – why was he on some shitty track away from any of the conventional routes into the city centre? Which meant what? That Sarah lived nearby? Or that he was killed elsewhere and brought to this spot?

I checked my watch. Eight o’clock. I picked up the phone. Philip Clarke answered on the first ring. Clarke was one of a number of forensic pathologists used by the Met. He was the only one I knew well enough to share an occasional bottle of wine with.

As usual, his voice sounded brisk and bright though he’d probably been working over fourteen hours. I imagined him in his surgical gown, portly, dashing, with a nose broken and bent from a collision with an oar during a boat race when he was at university. Under his thousand-pound double-breasted sharkskin suits from Gieves & Hawkes he wore novelty braces. ‘Joel, I’m about to get very red. Can’t it wait?’

‘Red with whom? Not the guy who looks like he shaved on a trampoline with a samurai sword?’

‘He’s only just landed on my plate, J,’ he said. ‘He’s fresher than my lunchbox.’

‘He knows… he knew my girl, Phil. I’m just looking for an in. Anything that might lead me to her. Ian Mawker’s blocked me out of this one. I’m in the cells if I kick around in his dust any more.’

‘You’ll cost me my job, Sorrell.’

‘Well, maybe, unless they catch you at your work-time hobby, necro-boy.’

‘I’ll email you if I see anything unusual. It will be anon. It will be unsigned. Got it?’

I fired up my Triassic-era laptop and stared at the winking cursor. I typed in: ‘SLX sesh’. I got a bunch of surfing references. I tried ‘SLX camera’. Bingo. There was a Rolleiflex SLX, a single lens reflex camera from the 1970s. Naturally it used film, which fit with Gower’s Luddite work ethic. I typed in ‘Martin Gower photography’.

BOOK: Sonata of the Dead
5.44Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

All Is Not Forgotten by Wendy Walker
As It Is in Heaven by Niall Williams
Cover Up by KC Burn
Lord Tony's Wife by Orczy, Emmuska
Such a Daring Endeavor by Cortney Pearson
The Night I Got Lucky by Laura Caldwell