The Facts of Life and Death (13 page)

Somebody knocked at the front door, and Ruby’s head snapped up.

Mummy and Daddy had keys. They never knocked.
Nobody
ever knocked because strangers never came to Limeburn – not even Jehovah’s Witnesses.

A pedlar had passed through once.

A goose walked over Ruby’s grave.

She tiptoed carefully across the room. She pressed her ear against the door. There was a knock right on it, and she squeaked in surprise.

‘Ruby?’

She stared at the door. The person who was knocking knew her name. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

‘Ruby?’

‘Yes?’ she whispered.

‘It’s me.’

She frowned. ‘Adam?’

‘I have something for you.’ he said. ‘Open the door.’

Ruby hesitated. She wasn’t supposed to let anyone into the house when her parents weren’t there. But they didn’t mean Adam, she was sure. And he had something for her. So she fumbled the key into the lock and let him in, along with a faceful of rain.

Adam was wearing the same red hoodie he’d lent her that day in the haunted house.

‘All right?’ he said.

‘Hi.’

They stood and looked at each other for a moment.

‘You OK?’ he said. He seemed nervous.

‘Fine,’ she said. Ruby was nervous too. She didn’t know why. They talked all the time when they were up on the swing or in the haunted house. She didn’t know why this was different, but it was. Maybe because it was night and she was alone, and because Adam had never been in her house before, and this seemed like a strange time to start.

‘It’s raining
really
hard.’

‘I know.’

Adam looked around the room and Ruby was acutely aware of its every shortcoming – the old stained sofa, the threadbare carpet, the dark patch of damp in the corner of the ceiling. Adam’s house was fresh and clean, and had one chair so old and precious that no one was allowed to sit on it.

‘Your house smells of fish,’ said Adam.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Daddy catches them in the Gut.’

He nodded.

‘Sometimes he sells them to the hotel,’ she continued, just to fill the air. ‘They’re worth loads but he only gets ten pounds.’

‘That’s bad business,’ said Adam sagely. ‘He should speak to my dad. He knows how to make money for people. That’s what he does.’

‘That’s a really good job,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but he’s away a lot.’

Ruby already knew that. Mr Braund was a tall, well-fed man who wore suits and drove up and down to London every week, in a different car each year.

There was a longish silence.

‘Do you want a custard cream?’ Ruby said.

‘No thanks.’

‘OK,’ said Ruby, then she asked, ‘What have you got for me then?’

‘Oh. Yeah.’ Adam handed her a smallish packet wrapped in blue tissue paper. He kept his other hand in his jeans pocket, as if he didn’t care.

‘What is it?’ she said.

‘Open it,’ he shrugged, ‘and find out.’

Ruby parted the tissue cautiously. Inside was a little plastic donkey. It was covered with grey flock, with beige around its eyes and muzzle, and hitched to a small wooden sledge that had
Clovelly
painted on the side.

Ruby felt a wave of something so warm and special flood through her that she almost cried.

‘Wow!’ she breathed. ‘It’s . . .
amazing!

‘It’s nothing really,’ said Adam.

It wasn’t nothing. It was
something. More
than something.

‘Did you get it in Clovelly?’

‘Yeah. I remember you said you wanted a donkey, so …’ Adam tailed off. Then added, ‘I walked all the way there and all the way back. It rained the whole time.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘That’s OK,’ he said.

‘But it’s not even my birthday.’

‘It’s not a birthday present. It’s just . . . you know, for
any
old day.’

‘It’s the best present I ever had.’ Ruby meant it; she couldn’t think of a better one right at that moment.

Adam went red but he looked very pleased.

‘I’m going to call him Lucky,’ said Ruby.

Adam moved closer so that their heads almost bumped. He touched the sledge. ‘I thought it would be pretty funny to put some carrots in here; like,
behind
the donkey.’

‘Yeah,’ nodded Ruby. ‘That
would
be pretty funny.’ She didn’t know why, but she totally agreed.

‘Thank you,’ she added.

‘No problem.’

They stood together for a moment, looking at the donkey. Then Adam said, ‘Anyway, I’d better go. Got tons of homework.’

‘Me too,’ she said.

‘Mine’s Roman roads and aqueducts,’ he said.

‘Mine’s a diary,’ said Ruby. ‘We have to write something every day.’

‘That’s harsh.’

‘I know. I usually just do it all on one day.’

He nodded at the donkey. ‘Well, today you can write about that.’

‘I will,’ said Ruby.

‘Night,’ he said.

‘Night.’

She closed the door behind Adam and locked it, then took the key out.

Ruby went upstairs to bed, even though it wasn’t even nine thirty. She made a space on her bedside table, carefully sweeping a spot clear between the mugs and the sweet wrappers and the books, and put the donkey there.

They didn’t have any carrots so she got a potato from the sack in the kitchen and put that in the sledge for now, like a big pale-brown boulder.

She wrote FRIDAY in her diary.

Adam brought me a donkey from Clovelly. It’s the best present I ever got. He walked there and back in the rain. He has a slej and his name is Lucky. I am going to put carrots in the slej because that will be pretty funny.

Ruby tried to stay awake, straining to hear Daddy’s car pull up on the cobbles, but instead she fell asleep, looking at Lucky.

John Trick was late home because someone had cut off Tonto’s tail.

Most of the Gunslingers had already meandered their way down Irsha Street by the time he and Shiny and Nellie helped Whippy outside to his steed.

The old horse was tied to the drainpipe where Whippy had left him, chewing on a complimentary sachet of Heinz Salad Cream.

They got a chair for Whippy to sway on, and guided his boot into the stirrup, then Hick and Nellie pushed, while Shiny ran round the back to stop Whippy tumbling straight off the other side. It had happened before.

‘Hey,’ said Shiny, but the other three were puffing and grunting too hard to hear him.

‘Hey!’ he said again, and rejoined them. ‘Tonto’s tail’s gone.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Nellie.

But it was true.

They helped Whippy out of the stirrup and off the chair and then the Gunslingers stood and stared at the rough bob, which was all that was left of Tonto’s wavy white tail.

Sometimes people shouted that they were wankers. Sometimes kids threw pebbles at them. But this was much worse.

‘Bastards!’ shouted Whippy.
‘Bastards!
’

Hick Trick shook his head. ‘First Blacky’s car gets keyed, and now this.’

They peered under wooden tables and even crawled about between chair legs – as if finding the missing tail would rectify the situation.

But Tonto’s tail was gone for good.

MIKE CREW
WAS
the most boring man on the planet.

Calvin Bridge had only been in his company for half an hour, and yet he had already mentally moved him to the top of that chart in the face of tough competition from his old European History teacher, Mr Branch, and the desk sergeant, Tony Coral, who had an extensive collection of railway memorabilia and didn’t care who knew it.

‘People think mud is just mud. They could not. Be. More.
Wrong
,’ said Professor Crew, with all the excitement of a member of the Magic Circle who has decided to blab.

Calvin glanced at DCI King from the corner of his eye and saw the same glazed look on her face which spoke of a monumental effort to give a shit. He was going to have to work very hard not to drift off.

Or laugh.

Would that be so bad? Calvin hadn’t laughed for ages. Last week he’d tried to make a joke about the bridesmaids’ dresses, but it had backfired. Then he’d committed the cardinal sin of not knowing what frangipani was. He’d thought it was a kind of cake, but Shirley told him he was just being ‘difficult’. He realized that the few minutes when DCI King had forced him to engage with her over Frannie Hatton’s corpse had been the most fun he’d had all week.

That couldn’t be right, could it?

‘These are your two samples.’ Crew was holding up two glass slides. ‘I have taken the liberty of labelling them OS 2425 by 1265 Interdental 45, identifying the geographical location according to the Ordnance Survey, and the physiological area from where the sample has been extracted – in this case interdentally – and finally a code relating to my own files and order of work, which is really just for my personal reference—’

‘And what did you find?’ said King, rubbing her hands together and leaning forward a little in the universal body language of ‘Let’s cut to the chase.’

Crew stuck his hand in front of her face and said imperiously, ‘Culm down, dear!’

King looked coldly at his palm.

‘Old pedology joke!’ Mike Crew laughed all by himself while King and Calvin exchanged strained looks. Then he continued, ‘So, the other sample has been labelled OS 2425 by 1265 Gateway 46.’ He stopped – almost daring King to try to hurry him up, but Calvin could see her mentally biting her lip. You couldn’t hurry some people. Professor Crew was going to say what he wanted to say and any attempt to curtail him would only result in prolonging the agony. It was like talking about seating plans, which was fast becoming the Rubik’s Cube of the wedding. Everyone had a back to be got up, an offence to be taken; everyone bore a grudge. Shirley assured him that there
would
be a way to make it work, but they just hadn’t found it yet.

God forbid people should just sit down and shut up and be grateful for a free lunch.

‘So,’ said Crew, ‘sample OS 2425 by 1265 Interdental 45 is basically a Capers series soil of heavy clay with particulate inclusions. How
ever
, sample OS 2425 by 1265 Gateway 46 consists of Manod soils, which are typically Brown Podzolic, which is a silty loam most prevalent over rock typical of the area between Bideford and the village of Abbotsham.’

He stopped again and they both waited for the next bit, but Crew just got a disappointed look on his face, and said a little tetchily, ‘That’s it.’

Apparently they’d missed the punchline.

‘Oh!’ said King. ‘Sorry, I was just . . . engrossed.’

That placated him. ‘I
know
!’ he enthused. ‘We walk on it every day, build our homes on it, grow our food in it, bury our dead in it, and yet how many people really
think
about soil? How many people really
care?’

Calvin had to turn his head so he wouldn’t catch King’s eye.

‘So these are two different soils?’ she said.

‘The fine earth fractions are entirely incompatible,’ nodded Crew.

‘So you’re saying that Frannie Hatton was killed somewhere else?’

‘Of course,’ said Crew. ‘As we say in the business – mud don’t lie.’ He affected a bad Al Jolson voice and matching racist hand-waggle, but King remained utterly straight-faced. She was a better man than Calvin. She cleared her throat. ‘And do you have any idea where that somewhere else might be?’

Crew milked it, of course. He made a great show of finding an ordnance Survey map of North Devon, which was in his desk drawer all along. Then he spread it across the pens and books and in-trays on his desk so that it was almost as bumped and hilly as its printed surface swore it should be.

Finally he hummed and hawed and waved a pencil over it like Harry Potter, until he settled on an area between Westward Ho! and Appledore.

‘Around there,’ he said.

‘That’s the Burrows,’ said Calvin.

‘What’s the Burrows?’ said King.

‘It’s this sort of . . . flat bit. Behind the pebble ridge.’

‘What’s the pebble ridge?’ said King.

‘It’s a ridge, Ma’am,’ said Calvin. ‘Made of pebbles.’

‘Aah,’ King smiled. ‘The clue was in the name.’

Crew hurried to regain the lead role in this play. ‘If you could send me a sample, I could be more specific. Close to the sea, given the presence in OS 2425 by 1265 Interdental 45 of particulate glucosamine.’

‘Sugar?’ said Calvin.

‘Shells,’ said King.

‘That’s right!’ Crew rushed to expand. ‘Tiny particles of crustacea, either fragmentary or granulated, interspersed with the parent pedogenic structure.’

‘Ground-up shells,’ King translated firmly. She had her message; apparently she no longer needed to massage the messenger.

‘Have a look,’ said Crew, and at his urging, Calvin stepped over to the microscope and peered through the eyepiece while the professor twiddled things.

The smear of mud they’d collected from Frannie Hatton’s front teeth blurred and unblurred and was suddenly in focus – and unexpectedly beautiful, with a thousand tiny fragments which Calvin assumed had once been shells, glittering like mother-of-pearl stars in a chocolate sky.