Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time (6 page)

Outside in the street, I took deep breaths of cold, fresh air to purge the taste and smell of the house from inside of me. As I walked away, the image of the opened Bible on the girl’s bedside table crept back into my mind and lingered like an unwelcome companion in my thoughts as I made my way back to my digs.

In my nightmare, I watch as the chattel house burns. Two big men hold my arms and shoulders while a third grabs my waist as they drag me to the ground. I frantically fight to free myself from their powerful grip, my legs flying out in all directions until they too are pinned down on the concrete road. My face contorts with anger and fear. Smoke and flames billow from the windows, the glass blown out by the extreme heat. Shouting out her name, my cries are lost in the roar of the blaze. I watch helplessly as she runs through rooms on fire, her hair alight and the skin on her body blistering in the white heat of the inferno.

It was her screams that wrenched me back to consciousness. I sat bolt upright in bed, perspiration covering my face, neck and chest. The stale taste of alcohol clung to the inside of my mouth as the reoccurring nocturnal horror withdrew back into the hidden recesses of my memory. With my back against the headboard, I smelt the warm, pungent scent of my sweat, which alerted me that I needed to take a bath, badly. I drew my legs over to the edge of the bed, my head in my hands before looking up at the clock on the wall: it was eleven thirty and I still felt tired.

I forced myself up and slowly made my way into the bathroom. The bath, a big white enamel tub, took a good ten minutes to fill from the slow-running hot water tap. I left it to do its thing and walked naked into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee, hoping that a caffeine hit would knock some of the fatigue out of my body.

I shaved, then grabbed a towel from the airing cupboard, wrapped it around my waist and lent against the bathroom wall, sipping at the boiling-hot liquid, my eyes closed, listening to the flowing stream of water. I got in and slid underneath the water, the warmth soothing my tired muscles and calming the edginess out of me. I ran a bar of soap across my body and hair, then lay there for a good twenty minutes before getting out and drying myself.

Winter sunshine rays illuminated the bedroom as I pulled open the curtains. The street below was still covered in thick snow with no sign of the start of a thaw.

I opened my chest of drawers, pulled out clean underwear and fresh socks, and flung them on the bed, then chose an olive-green plaid shirt, dark Levi’s and a thick knitted cardigan from my wardrobe. On the inside of the door a full-length mirror caught my reflection and I stared at myself for a moment. I’d gained a little weight around my waist, but was still in good shape, and the excess I’d easily lose with some rope work at Perry’s gym. At over six feet, I was broad and muscular across the shoulders, like my father. My eyes carried the same hazel colouring inherited from my Mama, but, sadly, I did not have the kindness of her smile. I dressed slowly, strapped my old watch to my wrist, rubbed Bay Rum through my hair and took the newspaper out of my shoes, which had soaked up the damp in the soles overnight, and put them on, tying the laces tight.

My digs were on the second floor of a two-storey Victorian red-brick corner house on Gwyn Street, with the living room situated at the rear of building. It had none of the comforts of a real home, but, in truth, I didn’t know what a real home was like any more. A beaten up armchair and a rectangular coffee table, both left when the previous owner had done a runner after not paying the rent, were the only pieces of furniture in the room. Sat on an old tea chest was a Dansette record player. A stack of LPs stood against the side of the chest. I turned on the player and searched through the record sleeves until I found my favourite album. I carefully placed it on the turntable, gently dropped the needle onto the revolving black disc, then turned up the volume and let Etta James do her thing.

The scrapbook and Manila envelope I’d taken from Stella Hopkins’ house stared back at me from the coffee table, where I had dropped them when I’d got in last night. I picked up the envelope and took out the black and white photograph. It was creased down its centre and dog-eared, with no writing on the back of it. There was no developer’s stamp either.

In the picture, taken in what looked like a garden or perhaps a park, was a child, a little black girl, no more than six or seven years old, hair tied in braids and pinned across the top of her head. She wore a candy-striped dress, little white socks and patent-leather shoes. She smiled happily while sitting on the knee of a well-dressed black man. In one hand she held a small cloth toy rabbit while the other clasped his palm. He was in his early forties and well built, with strong features. He had a real presence to him, something I couldn’t put my finger on at first. Perhaps it was the dark, hard eyes that unsettled me, or the awkwardness in his unsmiling face. He was a man who looked uncomfortable having his photograph taken. He was a man who looked a lot like a young Earl Linney.

*

It was just after one thirty on Monday afternoon and I was sitting in the Star and Garter in a booth at the furthest end of the pub. My pint of Dragon Stout was already half drunk. Lunchtime drinkers stood at the bar laughing and chatting while The Kinks’ ‘Tired of Waiting for You’ played on the jukebox. The events of the previous night while checking out Stella’s home had dragged up more questions than answers for me. If the police had searched the house, they hadn’t gone over the place very thoroughly. There were things that didn’t sit right in there. Surely alarm bells were gonna ring when the whole place stank like a washed-down morgue.

But I had found something other than the photograph and empty scrapbook. Something I hadn’t seen in a long time. It was the one thing the law would not have picked up on, even in the most disciplined and determined of searches. Not unless, like me, you knew what a duppy was and its connection to an open Bible by a bed.

My mama had been a dignified and proud woman with strong religious beliefs and a determination to teach her son about the customs and traditions of our people. Juju stories were part of that tradition, as was the legacy of our servitude and bondage. The slave routes from West Africa brought my ancestors to the island of Barbados in the mid 1600s. They brought with them a vast cultural history, and their strength and skills put to use in the hard labour that the rich Dutch settlers demanded of them on the sugar plantations on the island.

Through locust plague and hurricanes, famine and bloodshed, my forefathers, many of whom died before reaching their destination, continued to suffer the deprivations of cruel slavery until its abolishment in 1834. Those who survived and found freedom continued to work and live hard, oppressive lives. The struggles faced in their pasts long ago had created the resilient Bajans who now populate the island today. But my people also brought something to those islands unheard of before.

Travelling with them was our folklore, and with it an altogether darker side to our lineage. They brought with them the duppy.

A duppy is the manifestation of the soul of a dead person. It is a malevolent spirit that can appear in either human or animal form. It is said that a duppy can be heard in the dog howling in the night or be found in the buttress roots of silk cotton trees, patiently waiting for the moment that its evil intent can be released upon the innocent. It is believed that babies and children are susceptible to these ghouls. An open Bible is often placed in a newborn’s crib or bed to protect it and ward off evil. The Bible is usually left open at a Psalm. Just like the one I’d found next to Stella Hopkins’ bed.

My cousin Vic, even as a child, had referred to the supernatural superstitions of our descendants and elders as a “pile of mule shit”.

“Why you worryin’ ’bout some claptrap? It means nuttin’ except to some stupid old fool who tellin’ you tales at the foot o’ your bed at night,” he would say to me.

As kids, Vic and I would sit and talk at night in the ruins of the old sugar mill close to our homes. Our conversations were often dictated by my fascination for the stories that would be told to me by my grandmother.

Her yarns of ghosts, or duppies, as she called them, would frighten my sister and me before going to bed, keeping us awake long into the night. My need to recite those old wives’ tales to my cousin would always fall on deaf ears.

Then, as now, Vic feared very little other than the back of my uncle Gabe’s hand. His attitude to such things remained undiminished as he grew older. I, on the other hand, was not so sure. Perhaps the incubus I feared as a child still held me in its grip all these years later.

Something told me that Stella had left her Bible open for a good reason. But I didn’t know what that was. What kind of duppy had she feared so much that it made her clean down that house as if it were a hospital ward and then finally run out on the place and not be seen again?

I took the last few sips of my pint before getting up to the bar and ordering another. The landlord, Eric Coles, was a bad-tempered bastard at the best of times. He allowed “coloured people”, as he called us, to drink in his establishment not out of any sense of moral responsibility but because St Pauls was becoming something of a black ghetto and he knew we liked a drink. Coles took advantage of that, knowing that our money was as good as any white fellow’s. You’d just never hear Eric say that. He tipped my glass slightly to the side in his huge blue-veined hand and poured the bottle of stout into it, a caramel-coloured head forming as it filled, then stood it with some force onto a beer-soaked mat close to where I stood.

“That’ll be one and ten,” he said in a deep Somerset accent, holding out his palm towards me.

I leant over for the drink and pulled it towards me, reached into my wallet, picked out the change and handed it to him.

“You got a phone I could pay to make a call on, Eric?”

Coles stared at me for a moment, his head tilted to one side, the look on his face a mixture of dismay and curiosity as to why I would need to use his phone. I watched him as he thought for a moment before he turned around and picked up a green table telephone on a large lead from behind the counter and dropped it down in front of me.

“Leave the bleedin’ money on the bar when you’re done,” he mumbled gruffly as he walked away.

I took a small piece of paper out of my jacket pocket. On it was written the number I needed to call. Lifting the receiver, I dialled and waited. After it rang a couple of times, a woman with a voice that sounded as if the entire British Empire’s integrity rested upon it, answered.

“Bristol City Council, how can I help you?” she asked.

“Can I have Alderman Linney’s office, please?”

The line went quiet as I waited to be connected.

By the time Linney had picked up his phone I’d been hangin’ on the end of the damn line for the better part of five minutes. When he finally answered, he greeted me with all the disdain of an elderly schoolmaster who was about to give one of his pupils several sharp belts of his cane.

“Mr Ellington. You have something to tell me, I trust?”

Even though I couldn’t see him, I got the feeling he was looking down his nose at me, like some rich uncle having to put up with an unwanted nephew who had snot on his sleeve.

“We need to talk. I got some more questions fo’ you.”

I heard him take a deep breath before he spoke again.

“Questions . . . What kind of questions, Mr Ellington?” His speech was calculated and precise.

“Like why Stella Hopkins’ house smelt like an abattoir after a spring clean.”

There was silence for a moment before he spoke again.

“Meet me at the old observatory on Clifton Down at 4 p.m.; don’t keep me waiting, Mr Ellington.”

I didn’t get the chance to reply. The burring tone in my ear was Linney’s parting gift to me.

It was getting dark by the time Earl Linney arrived. I stood watching him get out of his car on the road below. He made his way up the pathway to the observatory that looked out across the well-heeled community of Clifton and the Avon Gorge. He was dressed for the cold weather in a heavy winter wool coat, navy silk scarf and a felt trilby hat that was pulled down low over his face. An icy wind blew across the down as I waited for him, stamping my feet on the snowy ground, my toes turning to ice in my shoes.

“You sure do know how to pick a meeting place.”

Linney gave no reply to my sardonic remark; he was maintaining his appearance of superiority. The straightness of his spine and the determination of his gait left me in no doubt of his mood. He looked me up and down, drawing the lapels of his coat across his chest before speaking.

“Let’s walk, Mr Ellington, keep the blood flowing. You look cold.” He smiled at me. It was the kind of smile that makes me want to smack somebody in the mouth. “You have questions for me? Let’s have them.”

He’d caught me off guard with his abruptness and he knew it. He was clearly unhappy with me after finding out that I’d broken into Stella’s home. I steadied myself for a moment, mentally, before coming back at him.

“Did the law search the girl’s house?” I asked, my tone now as point-blank as his own.

“They did.”

“So, did they speak to you ’bout her house when they searched it?”

“Briefly, yes.”

He was giving nothing away. It was like playing a game of verbal chess with the man. Perhaps it was his own sense of self-importance that made him so guarded, or perhaps he just didn’t like the way I spoke to him. I pressed on and was unable to disguise the irritation in my voice.

“Police officers go into a house like that, they’re gonna have someting to say.”

“What was there to say? I explained to the police about Stella’s somewhat unusual lifestyle, and that she had her own ways of coping. They were happy that nothing was unduly amiss in there. The girl simply liked the house to be clean.” His retorts were both clinical and concise.

“Brother, there is clean, and then there’s that kinda clean. That shack had been through one big shakedown: the walls were scrubbed and floors I coulda eaten food off of. It was sterile. There was hardly a scrap of furniture in the house, no food, not even a picture of her dead mama.”