Flesh And Blood (42 page)

When he left the shop Michael O’Leary was singing contentedly to himself, something slow and old by the Rolling Stones.

Pocketing the book, Elder followed the road up a slight incline and around to the sea. On one side a mismatch of beach houses stretched as far as the eye could see; along the other ran a promenade, tapering into the distance above a narrowing strip of sand. Black-and-white birds with red legs and long red beaks jittered along the tideline. A handful of children ran, shrieking, in and out of the slow, rolling waves.

The house was small and single-storeyed, raised up on stilts at the front and reached by wooden steps which climbed through a garden that was largely overgrown, small yellow and white flowers growing wild.

At the right, a broad, three-paned window looked out towards the beach; alongside, shaded, a deep porch ran back beneath the roof. The white boards were cracked and weathered and in need of fresh paint; the blue-green guttering sagged and lacked attention.

As Elder watched a woman came out through the door alongside the porch and shook crumbs from the cutting board in her hands. A check shirt, loose over a pale T-shirt, hung outside her blue jeans. Her fair hair had darkened and her figure had thickened but Elder was certain she was the same person who had stood on the cliff path near Saltwick Nab, that Tuesday fourteen years before, buffeted a little by the wind.

She paused for several seconds, staring out over his head, her gaze fastened on something beyond where he stood. And then she turned and was lost to sight.

Blood pulsing faster than it should, Elder pushed open the small gate and walked towards the steps.

‘Yes?’ She opened the door almost immediately in response to Elder’s knock.

Matched against the photographs he had seen, her mouth seemed to have shrunk a little, become turned in; lines of tiredness lightly etched her face and the lustre had gone from her eyes. Life had made her older than her thirty years.

‘Susan?’

‘Yes.’

‘Susan Blacklock?’

For a moment he thought she might run, jump back inside and bolt the door; all the times she had imagined this happening, her one nightmare, her recurring dream.

Close her eyes and he would disappear: open them and he would be gone.

He was still there.

‘Who are you?’ she said, her voice pitched low.

‘Frank Elder. I was one of the detectives looking into your disappearance.’

‘Oh, God!’

Mouth open, the air punched through her and as she swayed forward Elder reached out towards her, but she steadied herself, one hand against the frame of the door.

‘How did you… No, no, I mean… I mean why? Why after all this time?’

‘I wanted to be certain.’

‘And you came all this way?’

‘Yes.’

Tears welled in her eyes and she turned her head aside. Behind her, on the kitchen table, Elder could see a Thermos, slices of freshly buttered bread, the crusts of some removed, cheese and thin slices of ham.

Susan fished a tissue from her jeans pocket and wiped it across her face, blew her nose, apologised.

Elder shook his head.

‘You know then,’ Susan said, ‘what happened?’

‘I think so, yes.’

She nodded, sniffed and took half a pace back inside. ‘We usually go for a walk about this time. Take sandwiches, a flask. For lunch.’ Even after all that time, the more she spoke the more clearly the East Midlands accent showed through. ‘If you’d like to wait, we’ll not be long.’

Minutes later, rucksack on her back and wearing a fleece against the wind, Susan manoeuvred the wheelchair through the door.

Dave Ulney no longer cut a dash, a ladies’ man with kiss-curl quiff, suede shoes and full drape suit. His head lolled to one side, face pale and gaunt, hair sparse and white, his eyes a distant watery blue. Inside his carefully buttoned clothes, blanket wrapped around his legs, his body was shrivelled and old. Sixty-five, Elder thought, seventy at best, he could be a dozen more.

‘Dad,’ Susan said, ‘this is the man I told you about. From England.’

The eyes flickered a little; the hand that rested on the blanket, fingers knotted, lifted and was still.

‘He’s going to walk with us. So we can talk.’

Saliva dribbled colourless from one corner of her father’s mouth and, practised, she dabbed it away.

‘Okay, Dad?’

She reversed the wheelchair on the porch and backed towards the steps. When Elder offered to help she shook her head.

‘It’s all right. I’m used to it now.’

♦

There were a few more clouds, coming in high from the west but not yet threatening. Despite the sun, the chill in the wind was real and Elder was glad to slip his hands into his pockets as they walked. No need to ask questions, he knew she would talk now, in her own time.

On the beach a small, terrier-like dog raced after a ball.

‘When I found out,’ Susan said, ‘you know, who my real dad was…’ She paused and started again. ‘Kids, you’re always thinking: your parents, they’re not your real parents, they can’t be, like in fairy stories or
Superman
, and then when… when it happens… when I found that picture of my dad, that photo… I was like, this is all wrong, it isn’t me. And Mum, she wouldn’t talk about it, tell me anything, where he was or where he’d gone and I suppose I made up this person, this version of who he was. How he’d be different from Trevor, my stepfather, not always getting on at me, and he’d do exciting things, we’d do them together, him and me, and then one day he got in touch with me… Dave… my real dad. He gave this note to one of the girls in my school. I was fifteen. Just fifteen. Said he’d meet me. And he did. He was waiting… he was so… he was so…’

She stopped and turned away, head down, letting the tears fall, and Elder stood there, awkward, to one side, not knowing what to do or say.

Eventually, she wiped her face and tucked the blanket tighter round her father’s legs, pushing on into the wind.

‘You met your father,’ Elder prompted.

‘Yes. We went to this café, he said he didn’t have long – Mum’d have killed me if she’d known – he talked to me about where he lived, wonderful he made it seem, the other side of the world. There was this photo booth round the corner, he said he wanted a picture of me to carry with him. And then he said he’d come back for me. He promised. Our secret, he said, our secret. And he did. That summer we were in Whitby. Here, he said, I’ve got the tickets, yours and mine. A passport, everything. It’s all arranged. I didn’t know what to do. I thought: I can’t just go. But no, now, he said. You must come now. Or not at all. Don’t tell your mum. Don’t tell a soul.’

She looked at Elder for a moment, then away.

‘I know I should have written, left a note, phoned, something. Mum, what she must have been going through. But when I read about all the fuss – it was in the papers, even here – I just couldn’t. I don’t know if I was embarrassed or ashamed, but the longer I left it, the more impossible it became. And Dad said that was how she’d treated him all those years, as if he was dead. She’ll get over it, he said.’

Lightly, she touched his arm. ‘She hasn’t, has she?’

‘Not really, no.’

Elder was thinking about Helen, her marriage falling apart, the pilgrimages she made to lay flowers at what was never quite a grave.

‘We usually go just as far as the park,’ Susan said, pointing ahead. ‘There’s a place we can be out of the wind and have our lunch. There’s usually a sandwich going spare.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Better you than the gulls.’ In mock anger, she shook her fist towards them as they wheeled over their heads. ‘Varmints. Scavenging varmints.’ She smiled and when she did her whole face changed. ‘A book I had when I was a kid. They were always stealing the lighthouse keeper’s lunch. That’s what he called them, varmints.’

Still smiling a little, she unscrewed the top of the Thermos and Elder held the cup while she poured.

She helped her father first, tilting back his head a little and catching the liquid that ran back from his mouth with a paper towel.

They sat beside the wheelchair, eating their sandwiches, staring out to sea.

‘When I first came it was fine. I finished school, got on really well. And Dad was great, like a friend, a pal. The other girls, they were all jealous: I wish I had a dad like yours. Then after college I got this job with a children’s theatre company, doing a bit of everything. It was great. The sort of thing I’d always wanted. We used to go off sometimes, little tours. It was when we were down in Christchurch Dad had his first stroke. He was in hospital when I got back. Not too serious, the doctor said. He’d have to be careful, you know, but most of the use of his limbs had come back. And he could talk, there wasn’t anything wrong with his mind, he…’

She set down the cup and for a moment closed her eyes.

‘He couldn’t really work, not any more, but that didn’t matter, we managed. And then three years ago he had another massive stroke. After that he needed someone to look after him all the time and it was easier for me just to pack up work. He can’t… he can’t really do anything for himself. Not now.’

Reaching across, she squeezed her father’s hand.

‘It would have made more sense if we’d stayed in Karori where we were, but he’d always loved it out here. It was one of the first places he brought me when I first arrived. There weren’t so many houses back then. It was wild. When I’m dead, he’d say, this is where I want my ashes scattered, here along the beach.’

Standing, she threw the remains of a sandwich down towards one of the gulls and watched the others swarm and call around it.

‘We ought to be setting off back, I don’t want Dad to catch a chill.’

Outside the house they shook hands.

‘You won’t mind if I don’t ask you in?’

Elder shook his head.

‘Will you see my mother when you get back?’

‘I expect so, yes.’

‘Tell her I’m sorry.’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell her she should have told the truth.’

Elder thought he might not tell her that.

‘If things change,’ he said, ‘do you think you might come back to England?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘Okay.’ Elder turned and, hands in pockets, set off back the way he’d come. With any luck he wouldn’t have to wait too long for a train. He was trying to imagine what Susan Blacklock’s life was like now, knowing without fully understanding why she’d come, why she’d stayed. He saw her patiently unfastening her father’s clothes and easing them past his feet and hands, beginning to sponge his sallow skin…

In the event one train was cancelled, another delayed. Back outside the café, he opened the book of stories, half a mind to pass it on to Katherine when he was home. She and the writer, namesakes after all. But the stories were too depressing, he realised, too many lives left unfulfilled. He would buy her something at the airport instead. When he got up to go he left the book beside his empty cup.

On the seventh day of Christmas and still on remand, Shane Donald gouged a piece out of his arm with a rusted edge of razor blade. After a visit to the hospital and two sessions with the prison psychologist, he was transferred to the secure wing under Rule 43. Vulnerable prisoners like himself.

In Association, free to mill around under the officers’ eyes before being locked down, one of the prisoners pushed a scrap of paper into Donald’s hand and walked on.

The writing was scribbled and fast.

‘
Merry Christmas, sweetheart! I’ll make sure to give your love to Alan next time he calls. Though what he saw in you fuck knows!
’

The paper nearly slipped between Donald’s fingers. He read the note again and then once more.

It didn’t take him long to pick out Adam Keach through the slow back and forth of other prisoners, alone near the far wall, mocking smile on his face.

Donald shivered, screwed up the piece of paper tight and put it in his mouth, chewed it up and spat it out.

‘You all right, son?’ one of the officers said.

Donald nodded and moved on.

When he looked again, Keach smiled and blew him a kiss.

♦

Winter became spring. This time Katherine took the train, no argument, and Elder met her at the station in Penzance, driving back across the peninsula by the narrowest of lanes. The following day she felt strong enough to walk along the coast path into St Ives and then back across the fields. If everything went according to plan, she would start some light training when she returned to Nottingham.

That evening Elder suggested dinner in the pub where they had eaten before, but Katherine had wanted to cook. She had shopped in St. Ives for that purpose. Happily, Elder opened a bottle of wine while the kitchen filled with the sweet, sharp smell of onions and garlic softening in the pan, music playing from the radio in another room. Elder laid the table and they sat down to pasta with spinach and blue cheese, some good bread, a salad of cos lettuce and rocket and small tomatoes.

Katherine watched her father take one mouthful, winding the spaghetti on to his fork with care, and then a second.

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘You know damn well.’

‘It’s lovely.’ Laughing. ‘Really tasty.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Sure.’

They had agreed not to talk about what had happened and, in truth, Elder was relieved. I can do all that with my shrink, Katherine had said, it’s what she’s paid for after all. Since Christmas the sessions had been pulled back to once a week.

Katherine collected up the plates. ‘Is it warm enough to sit outside?’

‘Just.’

There was a violet light in the sky, the last vestiges of sun leaking into the far edge of sea. They sat with collars up, glasses of wine in their hands.