That Summer He Died (16 page)

‘Yeah, well, you be careful.’

‘Why?’

‘What? You mean, you’ve never seen
The Wicker Man
? Guy goes to some poxy, backwards seaside shithole and asks the wrong questions. . . next thing they’re trying to waste him.’

‘Yeah, Norm. Meanwhile, back in reality. . .’

‘OK, you’re probably right. You should check out that film anyway, though. Great shag scene in it with Edward Woodward and Britt Ekland where she gets all hot and sweaty, rubbing her knockers on a door knob. . .’ There was silence for a couple of seconds, with Norm obviously savouring this screen grab to the full. ‘Anyway, later, my man. Speak soon. Let me know how it’s coming on.’

And the phone went dead.

James turned the chair back round and saw Suzie standing by her chair, two drinks in her hands. Her face flared with colour.

‘Get out,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Get the fuck out of my pub now, you piece of shit,’ she shouted.

‘Now hang on a minute. What are you—’

She put the glasses on the table, leant forward so that her face was inches from him. ‘What am I talking about?’ she asked, her voice shaking. ‘You’ve got the fucking nerve to ask me what I’m talking about, when you’ve just been talking to some wanker on the phone about some article you’re writing on my brother’s death.’ The flattened palm of her right hand contracted into a fist. ‘You go. Go! You get the fuck out of here now!’

*

James stood on the doorstep of the Moonraker, holding a plastic bag containing his wet clothes, and stared down the street. The wind stung his cheek.

This was fucked. He couldn’t believe how fucked this was. She’d been back in his sights, and he’d lost her again. Worse than when he’d left and run away. There’d been no confrontation then. Just his own cowardice. But now. . . now she had a solid reason to hate him. Not just confusion over why he’d left, but loathing for him and who he’d become.

He checked himself. It was just a falling out. A row between two people who used to be friends. I’ve grown up. Moved on. What did I expect? That I’d fall in love with her all over again? That she’d want me back? What kind of crap is that?

I’ve got another life now. Suzie’s not part of it. I don’t need her back. I’ve got Lucy. I’ve got a job. I’ve got friends. I’ve got a flat in London and a future. I don’t need Grancombe and all its small-town shit.

But he felt sick, sick to the core.

He folded his arms across Suzie’s dead brother’s clothes and set off into the town to find somewhere to stay.

Alan stood like a shop dummy held upright by the rigid contours of his black suit, face as grey as the stones of the church wall behind him.

His shoes were polished, his beard gone. He looked immaculate. Above him shone the sun, burning relentlessly down, casting his distorted shadow across the open grave. He was visibly shaking, eyes raised to the sky as if he was talking directly to God.

‘I know what I’m meant to tell you,’ he was saying to the crowd of mourners. ‘That Jack was a good man. That he didn’t deserve this. That no one deserves this.’ He paused. ‘But that’s not what I feel. That’s not what anyone who knew Jack feels. His friends.’ His hands curled into fists. ‘And so I’m not going to fob you off with clichés. We’re not here to
celebrate
Jack’s life. His life was stolen. We’re here to demand justice – to demand that the scum who hacked him down in the woods is caught. No matter what it takes. Is caught and punished.’

James watched the elderly parish priest, Mark Gale, bow his head, exaggerating the stoop of his shoulders even further. His lips moved in silent prayer, and then, as Alan had done before, he looked to the sky. Was that where the answer lay? James wondered. Up there in that great blue mirror? Was what had happened to Jack Dawes on the Wednesday night – they’d pinned the time of death down now, to a matter of hours – locked up there like a negative, waiting to be developed?

James looked around the assembled mourners. The graveyard of St Donal’s was packed with young and old. People had formed lines behind one another between the ancient gravestones, as if waiting in orderly queues for buses to arrive; hundreds of them, those who’d arrived last standing on the road outside the low stone walls.

The whole spectrum of the local population was represented. There were Jack’s contemporaries. People who’d attended Grancombe’s primary school with him, had watched him pick up his first paintbrush, splash colour with it across a white sheet for the first time. Then there were those older than he, men and women who’d known Jack’s parents, had maybe babysat for him, carried him home after he’d scuffed his knees on the rocks off Eagle’s Point, had given him a tissue to dry his tears. And those who were younger. Teenagers like Alex and Daniel. People who’d read his name in the tourist brochures, had joked about the fame of the man they were used to seeing since their birth, walking the streets of the town and talking to their parents.

The cops were here too. Murphy’s uniformed sidekicks flanked the TV crew and reporters. And Murphy himself, also glancing up occasionally into the sky, studying it like a fisherman searching for omens then turning his gaze back to the crowd: watching, watching and waiting, knowing, as everyone knew, that it was possible that Jack Dawes’s killer was amongst them today.

‘After my wife Monique died, Jack was there for me,’ Alan said. ‘Just the same as he’d been there for us every day. Friendship isn’t a strong enough word for what he showed me. Nor loyalty. Nor trust. Jack epitomised all these qualities, but he was more than that too.’ Alan’s voice started to crack. ‘He helped me so much when she went. Helped me to carry on living. And now he’s dead and I’ll never have the chance to repay him.’ Alan reached into his pocket and withdrew a bunch of keys. He stepped forward and dropped them into the grave. They landed with a clatter on the coffin lid. ‘The keys to your home,’ he said into the pit. ‘Your trust. Returned to you now.’

James looked across the grave at Alex. He was standing next to his mother, his arm supporting her around the waist, the protective stance somehow making him look older, far removed from the teenager who’d sat on the clifftop and passed James that spliff. His shades were missing, his eyes downcast.

Behind him, to his left, stood Dan, his blond head raised above the crowd. James hadn’t seen either of them since he’d left them in the woods. Dan’s mouth was sealed today, not how James remembered him, not how James remembered him at all.

Alan had finished speaking. He stepped back from the grave and stood with his head bowed. The TV camera crews began packing up, their outside broadcasts over, preparing to move on to the next tragedy in the next town. Mark Gale took over the proceedings, sermonising, interspersing his theme of grief and mourning with appropriate quotations from the Bible.

After Alan’s earlier passion, Gale’s words sounded rehearsed, meaningless: background noise. He must have sensed this. He raised his fragile voice, a shepherd whose flock had deserted him as he’d slept.

The change of tone, though, failed to snag James’s attention. He had spotted Alex moving, edging slowly sideways through the crowd, until he’d successfully detached himself from it entirely. He was now leaning against a gravestone, staring at James, his shades back in place. He raised his hand, pointed to the entrance to the graveyard, then turned and walked away.

‘What kept you?’ he said, when James joined him in the street.

‘I don’t know.’ He glanced back at the church. Some of the people gathered there were staring at them. ‘I didn’t feel right about leaving like that.’

‘Bullshit. Your uncle said what needed to be said. Gale’s senile. He’ll be there for hours, giving it the religious thing. Biggest congregation he’s had for years.’ Alex cocked his left eyebrow over the frame of his shades. ‘Suits you.’

‘What does?’

Alex stretched out his arm, pinched the lapel of James’s jacket. ‘The suit.’

‘It’s Alan’s,’ he said, taking in Alex’s faded jeans and white t-shirt. ‘Said I should wear it.’

Alex looked at his watch. ‘Come on.’ He set off down the street, the sun casting an elongated shadow on the concrete surface before him. ‘It’s opening time. Reckon we should get a drink. Reckon we deserve it for sticking that out.’

‘What about Dan? Is he coming?’

‘Nah.’

‘How is he?’

‘Dunno. Haven’t spoken to him since we were in the cop shop with Murphy. I tell you, man, the way he put us in separate rooms to question us about how we’d found the body and what state it had been in and all that, you would’ve thought it was us that had killed the old bastard. Murphy was loving it. Getting a buzz. Little cop. Big murder. Must’ve made his year.’ Alex lit a cigarette. ‘He ask you if you’d touched anything?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What d’you say?’

‘I told him no.’

‘What about me? Me and Dan? He ask you if we touched it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And?’

‘I told him Dan had fallen on the body.’ James stared ahead. They were rounding the bend of the road by the train station. He knew what Alex was really asking him, knew it wasn’t about Dan’s fall at all. ‘I didn’t tell him anything else.’

Alex placed his hand on James’s shoulder and squeezed. ‘Good. I knew you’d keep your gob shut. Not that it would have mattered,’ he added quickly. ‘Didn’t mean anything anyhow, right?’

‘Sure. Didn’t mean a thing.’

‘Still, it’s good you didn’t tell him. Never can tell with someone like Murphy. He’s got a sick mind. Can’t tell how he’d interpret something like that. . . how he might try and use it to his advantage.’

James didn’t want to talk about this any more. Forget how Murphy would interpret what Alex had done, James wasn’t even sure how to interpret it himself. It was still there in his mind. What Alex had said about it afterwards. All that stuff about wondering what you were capable of, seeing where your guts ran out. It had sounded like preparation, as if it had been some test Alex had needed to put himself through. But why? That’s what really bothered James. No one volunteered to take tests unless they thought they were going to lead somewhere, open up opportunities previously denied to them.

‘He warn you off speaking to the journalists?’ Alex said. ‘Feed you the line about not making matters worse by giving them more to write about?’

‘Yeah, like they haven’t got enough to fill the front pages for the rest of the week.’

‘Makes sense, though. My old girl was telling me that the train out of here the night the news broke was packed with families getting the fuck out. Only thing I reckon Murphy’s been right about in his life: soon as it’s out of the papers, the better for everyone. Act like nothing’s happened, that’s what Dan’s dad says. Business as normal till the business comes back.’

‘Do you know how he is?’ James said.

‘Who?’

‘Dan. I heard that Mark Gale guy saying he was in a bit of a state.’

‘Medicated up to his eyeballs, the way I heard it,’ Alex said.

‘He looked well spaced out in the graveyard.’

‘Poor sod.’

Alex laughed. ‘Poor sod nothing. Free drugs. Pop down the doctor’s and get doped up. Lucky sod, more like.’ He looked sideways at James. ‘Don’t sweat it. Dan’ll be fine. Just give him a few days.’

They turned into the high street. James scanned the shopfronts. ‘Closed’ signs hung in their doorways. Tourists stood in huddles outside on the pavement, empty shopping baskets in their hands.

‘Morons,’ Alex said, as they approached a particularly confused-looking couple. ‘Looks like no one’s told them that Grancombe ain’t opening till the funeral’s over.’

James could smell bacon cooking somewhere nearby. Sunlight splashed his face, warming his mood. ‘So where are we heading?’

‘The Cove. Down on the sea front.’

‘Why will that be open if everywhere else is shut?’

Alex grinned at him. ‘Your uncle gave a good speech, yeah, but not everything he said was true.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like all that stuff about loyalty and trust. Not everyone thought of Dawes that way.’

‘I don’t get you. All those people at St Donal’s. All those people crying.’

‘Women,’ Alex corrected, brushing past a group of middle-aged tourists. ‘Just the women.’

‘Whatever. They wouldn’t have cried unless they cared.’

‘I’m not saying they didn’t. A lot of women did care about Dawes. If rumours are right, a fuck of a lot of women cared.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘That a rich and famous artist in a small town like this is a pretty desirable proposition, especially when he’s single. That there are a lot of bored women round here married to boring men. Work it out, man. Work it out.’

James nodded. ‘Just rumours, though, you say?’

‘Some, yeah. Some, no.’ Alex turned right at the bottom of the high street. The beach was studded with tourists, the tide out. ‘I can think of at least one confirmed kill chalked up by Casanova Dawes.’

‘Who?’

‘Josie Tawnside. Will Tawnside’s wife. Actually caught her in the sack with Dawes. A couple of years back.’

‘What happened?’

‘The usual, I guess. Slapped his wife. Punched Dawes. Divorced his wife. Never spoke to Dawes again.’

Alex slowed to a halt outside a thick-walled, thatched building overlooking the beach. A sign hung from the black beam over its front door: a weather-beaten painting of the sea dashing against the rocks, with words written in looping black letters beneath: THE COVE.

‘This is Tawnside’s place,’ Alex said, pushing open the gate to the beer garden and heading for the door. ‘Strictly tourist. Wouldn’t normally be seen dead here.’

James followed him, ducking through the low doorway into the pub. He stopped for a moment, the gloom inside eclipsing the sun, leaving him dazed. He watched Alex stride across the uneven, flagstone floor towards the bar, then gradually the room came into focus.

It was tacky, to say the least. Alex had been right: strictly tourist. Cliché-ed paintings of Grancombe – kites being flown on the beach, raging storms, kids licking ice creams – studded the walls, probably the work of local artists, though equally probably not the works of the late Jack Dawes, if what Alex was saying about the proprietor’s wife was true.