Thorn In My Side (11 page)

Not knowing if
she really wanted an answer or not, Smiler nodded, and bit his lip
to stop an actual laugh at the picture in his head of Mike standing
on top of a car, the raging North Sea all around him and being
rescued by a helicopter, as she went on, 'And him living on the
island most of his growing years in short pants, he really should
have known better, shouldn’t he? No one, but no one, beats Mother
Nature, certainly not bloody Michael Yorke. Mother Nature isn’t
that easily charmed.'

Mike laughed.
'Never gonna live that one down, am I? And your memory’s fading,
darling, I never wore shorts. They were a few generations before
me. Don’t know who you’re thinking about there -- some old
sweetheart, perhaps?'

'Get away with
you.' Laughing, she flapped her hands at him.

Mike’s phone
rang. Still smiling at Aunt May, he took it out of his pocket.
'Hello, this is Mike.’ His smile faded as he listened intently to
the voice at the other end. 'OK,' he said a moment later. 'I’m on
my way.’

Slapping the
phone shut, he said to Smiler and Aunt May, 'Gotta go, guys. See
youse both tonight. And
you
be very good.' He patted Tiny’s
head, and received a wag from his tail, and a nudge on the knee
from Tiny’s nose.

As Mike headed
back over the causeway, a picture of the murdered girl entered his
mind. He couldn’t begin to understand the pain she must have
suffered at the hands of the depraved bastard who had murdered her.
Thank God two suspects were being held at the station.

Though it
seemed too easy. Far too easy!

Almost as if
they had been handed to them on a plate. Which made Mike all the
more suspicious. Nothing involving murder was ever that easy.

He drove over
the causeway, reminding himself to pick up a timetable of the
tides. He never wanted to go through the experience of being
rescued from a car roof ever again.

As Mike pulled
away, Smiler looked out of the corner of his eyes at Aunt May,
thinking to himself
, Ohh dear me, she’s got to be the
oldest chick in the world.

Even though it
was a warm day, Aunt May, all four foot eleven of her, was swaddled
in a thick brown cardigan that probably could go round her twice.
Her short iron grey hair was permed to within an inch of its life,
and she had wrinkles on top of wrinkles.

Then she
smiled. Her blue eyes, far from faded and full of intelligence,
laughed out at the world.

'Come in, come
in,' she said, pointing back at the red door with her walking
stick.

Smiler followed
her. The path was bordered with red and blue petunias, the lawns on
either side looking like they had been cut with a pair of manicure
scissors. The window boxes were brimming with more petunias, and
the doorframe was covered in a pale purple clematis. An overriding
perfume came from the honeysuckle that climbed rampantly over the
left side of the white-painted house.

'Nice flowers,'
Smiler remarked. He felt obliged to make some sort of conversation,
seeing as the woman was being good enough to put him up.

'Too leggy,'
she replied. 'All the rain has made them twice as tall as they
should be, so the bloody flower heads suffer.'

'Oh, yes, it
definitely spoils them.' Smiler had delved into many a gardening
book.

Just before he
stepped over the threshold, a shadow seemed to pass in front of
him. Smiler shivered. He spun round, a prickly feeling dancing
along the back of his neck. It was a sure sign that he was being
watched. It brought on a fresh bout of shivering that he could not
control. He began to rapidly count the fingers on his left hand
with the forefinger of his right.

Noticing this,
she said, 'Come in boy, come in. Don’t be bloody sh----'

Aunt May looked
over Smiler’s shoulder. For a moment she froze. Then she seemed to
shake herself, looked at Smiler, gave him a lopsided smile, and
again told him to come in.

She showed him
up to his room, a small but neat place, a piece of heaven to him
after some of the doss houses he’d woken up in. The overriding
colour was blue -- pale blue walls, dark blue carpet, dark blue
bedspread and curtains. Even the one picture on the wall was a
field of bluebells. He remembered a one-room apartment in London
that was the size of this room, an apartment that six of them had
shared. Those walls had been blue as well until the day Irish Jimmy
lost it, and took a razor blade to his own throat, and changed the
colour of the walls to red.

But that was
cool. All that was in the past. He could live with blue.

Aunt May urged
him to leave his unpacking until later, because tea was ready
now.

Facing the
window, he sighed, but it was a sigh of contentment, the first such
sigh he had ever experienced. He stared out the at the
sixteenth-century castle standing regal in the sunshine. Then he
blinked rapidly, as dark thunder clouds began to rise above the
parapet. He blinked again, and they were gone. Once more the
landscape was bathed in glorious gold.

His packing
consisted of two T-shirts, both black, and an extra pair of jeans,
which was a lot more than he’d had a few months ago or, as he
secretly liked to call it, the dark years. Life before Mike.

He shook
himself, not wanting to go down that dark road to the before place.
From now on that place was to be avoided at all costs. He was
wrapping all those terrible memories up. They were parked in a
corner of his mind behind a very high wall. Just a few loose ones
to catch that crept up on him now and then in the middle of the
night, or at a lonely time.

He followed
Aunt May down the stairs and into the floral living room, which was
in direct competition with the garden. Flowers on the wallpaper of
every shade imaginable, huge red flowers on the carpet and, not to
be outdone, the settee and matching chairs looked like someone had
scattered half a dozen packets of mixed flower seeds over them.
Smiler much preferred his room’s décor.

They walked
through into the large kitchen diner that had three small tables,
each with three chairs pushed in. All the tables were covered in
sparkling white tablecloths and set for tea. The cream place mats
had floral designs, and so did the white teacups, a different
flower on each one.

He guessed Aunt
May was a flower nut. On the opposite side of the kitchen was a
huge old-fashioned cooker. The sink was under the window, which had
fancy cream nets up, and cream-painted cupboards ran round the
walls.

'Sit here,
dear,' Aunt May said, pointing to the first table as she walked
over to the cooker.

Smiler sat
down. When she opened the oven, his nostrils flared as the
wonderful smell of home-made chicken casserole invaded the room.
His mouth watered as his stomach rumbled. He hadn’t realised how
hungry he was. For years he’d eaten so little, most days getting by
on handouts from a baker’s wife round the corner from Cardboard
City. She gave stuff away to the homeless, unbeknown to her
husband, on a regular basis. His stomach was used to getting by on
very little, and had been since forever. He could eat now though,
since he’d met Mike, not huge amounts, but a hell of a lot better
than he ever had before.

He had to stop
Aunt May from filling his plate to overflowing, it would be bad
manners if he couldn’t eat it all. The lady was, after all, Mike’s
aunt, and deserved his respect.

'Aren’t you
hungry?' she asked, her nose shrinking into the middle of her face
as she frowned at him.

'Yes, but I…
Er… I can’t eat a whole pile… Small stomach.' He patted his stomach
and threw her a twitch of a smile.

She tutted,
then said, 'OK, son, but in my opinion growing boys need a lot of
bloody fuel.'

Smiler nodded
as he looked at his plate.

Driving into
Berwick, Mike decided to drop in at the murder scene before going
to the station. A policeman was standing outside the door to the
flat, in the process of chasing half a dozen nosy kids away as Mike
pulled up.

'Hey, copper,
is that right – the bloke who lives in there’s a murderer?' shouted
one of the boys, no more than eight years old with a shock of red
hair.

'Has he chopped
somebody to bits?' asked a wide-eyed blonde girl of the same age,
her voice rising with fright.

'On yer bikes,'
the policeman replied, his eyes on Mike as he got out of the
car.

Mike showed his
badge. The officer nodded as he stepped to one side to let Mike
through.

'Hey, mister,'
the redhead shouted.

'I’ll not tell
yer again,' the copper said, this time glaring at the boy.The kids
scampered off, and Mike hid a smile as he opened the door. He
noticed the bloody handprint on the door, plus two others along the
hallway. The bedroom door was open and, as Mike stepped in to the
bedroom, he bit down on a gasp. He found himself looking at a scene
from a slaughterhouse.

The sheet had
been taken away for DNA tests, but the blood had soaked through.
Ninety per cent of the mattress was stained and still looked damp,
showing just how much blood the victim had lost.

Mike stepped
closer. The place smelled of blood and he wrinkled his nose.

'She’s
obviously been murdered here,' he muttered, walking round the bed
to the wall and back again, studying the bed from every angle.

'The vicious
bastard.' He turned his attention to the rest of the room. Next to
the bed, where a lot of the blood was, small chunks of white clung
to the wall. He shuddered, knowing it was flesh, seeing in his mind
the whip falling on the girl, pulling back ready for the next lash,
scattering blood and tiny pieces of flesh in its wake.

Taking a deep
breath he continued his survey of the room. Nothing looked like it
had been disturbed in any way. Standard white furniture, probably
flat-pack. A double wardrobe, a night stand with an alarm clock,
and a large set of drawers, with a smaller set underneath the
window.

There were
blood and specks of flesh on every item.

Mike frowned as
he looked at the trail of bloody footprints that led outside,
probably the same person who the handprints belonged to. As if
suddenly realising what he’d done, the bastard had panicked then
turned and run, not caring what he touched or what sort of trail he
left.

Leaving the
house, Mike had a few words with the policeman outside before,
grim-faced, he got into his car and headed for the police
station.

Smiler had been
introduced to the two other guests, a pair of oldish ladies -- one
so fat she had three chins, dressed in a red jogging suit which
only emphasised her many other rolls of flesh, the other in a blue
suit, and thin enough to give Aunt May a run for her money. The
pair of them giggled their way through tea like two excitable
schoolgirls. They were on holiday together, and had so fallen in
love with the island they were thinking of buying a house. Trouble
was, they complained to Smiler, there were none for sale.

Smiler nodded
his sympathy, and decided to look round the island for himself.

It was a place
that had been on his ‘must visit ‘ list ever since he’d read about
it. The stories surrounding the island had taken his mind away for
a long time to that special place, leaving his body in limbo to
deal with the day-to-day trauma of living.

Holy Island.
Lindisfarne. Special names for a special place.

Tea over, he
thanked Aunt May for the fantastic meal, said goodbye to the
ladies, who were heading home that night at low tide, and went
outside.

Deciding to
walk along to the castle first, he rescued Tiny from the back
garden and called into the village shop for cigarettes. He stepped
over a placid-looking Golden Retriever to get into the shop, having
tied Tiny up out of the way, not knowing how he behaved around
other dogs. But there was nothing to worry about. The retriever
lifted its head and yawned at him, then did the same to Tiny, who
sat down and ignored it. Smiler laughed. He liked animals,
especially dogs. Dogs could see things. They were in tune to the
senses that most humans had lost long ago.

The shopkeeper,
a small thickset man with a long nose, his wavy brown hair brushed
over his head in thin strands to cover his baldness, served Smiler,
suspiciously watching a group of youths at the back of the shop
through his thick glasses, his mean eyes nasty slits.

'You with
them?' he snarled, as he handed Smiler’s change over.

Smiler shook
his head. 'No. Why?'

'I’ve seen that
sort of scam before. You keep me occupied while they do the
nicking.'

'Well, you’ve
got it wrong this time. Sorry.' Smiler pocketed his change. He
stared for a moment at the shopkeeper's right hand, at the obvious
bite mark in the soft flesh between thumb and forefinger. Looking
up at the shopkeeper's face, he felt a familiar shiver inside.

'Dog bite,' the
shopkeeper offered by way of explanation. Dismissing Smiler, he
swung his attention back to the boys. 'Do you lot want anything?'
he demanded as Smiler walked out.

Miserable
git,
Smiler thought.
That bite's too small to be off the
retriever and that’s a fact.

He nearly
tripped over Aunt May on the step.

'I see you’ve
met our temporary shopkeeper,' she whispered as, laughing and
giggling, the boys tumbled out of the shop. 'He’s from the
mainland. The real shopkeeper’s a very nice man. On his holidays.
France, I think he said -- or was that last year?'

'Oh, right,'
Smiler said. Nodding to her, he took Tiny’s lead and set off.

He crossed the
road opposite the Lindisfarne Scriptorium and headed on past The
Ship Inn. At the bottom of the street was Sandham Lane, with Aunt
May’s house at the far end. Sandham Lane was the only street that
had a name plaque on it. This, Aunt May had told him, was so that
the old dears off the bus trips would know where to meet up. She’d
also told him he must never say
P-I-G
on the island. He
spelt the word in his head. It was very unlucky to say it out loud.
Being very superstitious, Smiler didn’t even want to say it in his
head. Bad luck was the last thing he needed, he certainly wasn’t
going to encourage it.