That Summer He Died (22 page)

Get a grip.

Surely even Alan’s house was preferable to what his mind had just dredged up. He retrieved his bag from the car and hurried through the rain to the front door. He fumbled for the keys.

Fuck the past. You can deal with it. You’ve dealt with it up till now. You can deal with it again.

He turned the key in the lock and opened the door, but just stood there, letting the rain pelt down on his head, staring at the flagstone floor and the frayed Indian rug, like an astronaut confronted with that first giant step, wary about venturing forth, wondering if the surface would sustain his weight.

He told himself that this was no longer Alan’s home but his – despite what Alex and his thug mates might think to the contrary. He stepped inside and, as he did, he forced himself to believe that he was claiming it as his own.

It was cold in here; colder than outside, if that were possible. The smell of damp was overpowering. He reached for the light switch and flicked it on: nothing. Hardly surprising; no one left to pay the bills. He chucked his bag – that he’d brought with him from the hotel on the off-chance he might stay the night – down on the floor, apprehensive about exploring further.

Instead he busied himself stocking up the wood-burning stove with faded magazines and cobwebbed logs. He lit a cigarette and then the fire and sat cross-legged before it, stabbing at the flames with a rusted poker.

Taking out his phone, he spent twenty minutes talking to the electricity people, explaining the circumstances and asking for an emergency call-out. They said they could make it the next day. A small step, but it made him feel better. It was progress of sorts.

Heat spread through him and he stripped off his wet clothes, wrung them out and hung them on the back of a chair before the stove. Then he got some fresh clothes from his bag and dressed.

‘OK,’ he said aloud, ‘let’s get this show on the road.’

Speaking was a mistake. The sound was sucked into the walls as soon as the words left his mouth, leaving only the crackle of the fire. Thank God he had the hotel to return to. There was no way he could spend a night here, he realised. Not even a day.

He thought of his car, parked in the drive. The temptation was strong for him to run away, drive back to Grancombe, hand the keys back to the estate agent and get the hell out. Let them deal with this shit hole and sell it on.

But, at the same time, James knew he couldn’t do that. Respect for the dead. His mother’s brother. If not for Alan, then for her. He had till the end of the week to sort out Alan’s possessions. It shouldn’t take him too long. Just the personal stuff. Leave the rest to be flogged off with the house, or contract in some local firm to organise a yard sale.

He should take a look round. Just to check what state the rest of the property was in. The gaping doorway leading into the rest of the house stretched like a great dark mouth that might swallow him whole.

Now.

Do it now.

He picked up the poker and weighed it in his hand, looking at the doorway leading through to the sitting room again. Then he let the poker clatter to the flagstones. What was the point? Ghosts had no bodies. Ghosts felt no pain. Pain was what they’d left behind. And, anyway, there were no ghosts. He’d found out that much in the graveyard when he’d woken in Suzie’s arms. Only the living. He pictured her face as she’d ordered him to leave the Moonraker. Only the living remembered him now.

He dug out a notebook and pen. Might as well keep a record of what he was planning to take. He set off around the rest of the house. Quickly. The sooner this was over, the better. Then work. Back to work. Back to what Norm had sent him down here for in the first place.

An hour later, he was huddled once more in front of the fire. He stared at the notebook, flipped through the pages. He hadn’t written much down: Alan’s computer, papers and books, his photographs and several paintings. James had checked the paintings carefully, but surprisingly none of them had been by Jack Dawes. The rest – the furniture, crockery, clothes and other possessions – he’d leave for the estate agent to deal with. It meant nothing to him. Or, rather, it meant too much. Those things were reminders of a time he just wanted to forget. The estate agent could burn them for all James cared.

He’d been surprised by how orderly the house had been. Each room he’d entered had been tidy, meticulously so. Right down to the beds being made, with their sheets turned neatly back over the blankets.

Since he couldn’t imagine anyone else who would have acted the Good Samaritan following Alan’s death, James had to assume it was Alan himself who’d been responsible. His final cleansing act. Even the kitchen and bathroom had been spotless, sanitary products lined along their shelves. All new. All bought for this one purpose. It had been the same throughout the house.

Apart from the basement.

That had been locked. The one room James had been denied access to whilst he’d lived here with Alan was still off-limits. During his inventory tour, it had been the one door James had actively homed in on.

As he’d approached, he’d reimagined the noises of Alan’s nocturnal pilgrimages here playing on an endless loop through his mind. The sound of the study door opening. Footsteps in the corridor. The key being slipped into the door which led to the cellar. The opening of the door and its bolt being rammed home on the inside. Then silence. Silence once more. Standing there, now an adult, James had wanted to break it down, had even gone so far as to shove his shoulder against it to test this possibility. But it had felt too solid. Without the key, it might as well have been made of concrete.

James picked up his mobile again and called McCullock. A receptionist and then a secretary patched him through.

‘Hello, Mr Sawday,’ McCullock said. ‘How can I help?’

‘I’m down in Grancombe,’ he said. ‘Alan’s place.’

‘Oh. Is everything in order?’

‘Yes, very much so. There’s just one thing. The keys you gave me. . .That was all there were?’

‘Yes, the two sets of house and the car keys. All on separate key rings.’

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘Positive.’

James thanked him and cut the line. The basement key would be here somewhere. Probably in Alan’s room. In a bedside table or something, or maybe a kitchen drawer. He considered checking these locations out, then rational thought got the better of his curiosity. It could wait. He had the rest of the week. Might as well have a positive reason to return here. For now, though, it was time to leave. Back to the hotel. Take a hot shower. Get the smell of this place off his skin. And sleep. Sleep off the exhaustion of seeing Alex and this house.

Alex. That situation wasn’t over with yet. Not by a long way. Not until James was safe back in London again.

He closed the vents on the fire, but stayed kneeling there for a while, gazing round the gloomy room. A surge of nostalgia rolled through him like the purr of a cat. He thought of Monique and Alan, and how they must have sat here on other winter days, warming themselves by the fire. Then, after her death, Alan alone. He wondered what Lucy would make of this place, what it would be like to sit here with her beside him. And then he thought of Suzie, and the pain he’d felt outside the Moonraker. Just memory, he told himself. Just wanting to be a kid again, wanting to feel what it was like before he grew up. Natural. Nothing more. Just wanting that happiness back. Before the world got complicated. Before the world turned black.

He stood and pulled his dried clothes from the chair. He stuffed them into his bag and headed quickly for the door.

*

Showered, clean, James shuffled his chair round and put his feet up on the hotel bed, pressing his phone to his ear.

‘
Grancombe Gazette
,’ a woman’s voice chimed.

‘Oh, hi. My name’s James Sawday. I’m a journalist with
Kudos
, the men’s magazine. I’d like a word with your editor, please.’

‘I’ll just see if he’s there, Mr Sawday. And – sorry – who did you say you worked for?’

‘
Kudos
. The men’s magazine.’

‘Right, hang on a second.’

A panpipes version of The Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ came on, doing nothing to improve James’s mood. He rubbed his hair, still wet from the bath, with the hotel towel and flicked through the copy of the
Gazette
which he’d bought on the way back from Alan’s.

It was a weekly. Twenty pages long. There was a photo of some councillor on the front, the headline reading, ‘Grancombe Sails Past European Beach Standards’. The rest was petty news, interspersed with feature advertisements for various restaurants in the local area. A half-page ad for Current nightclub caught his eye, promoting a party to be held there at the weekend.

He was surprised by the names of the DJs who’d be playing, recognising two of them from London clubs. He knew the fees they charged, couldn’t help being impressed that anywhere in off-season Grancombe could afford them. Might even check it out with Lucy and Co. when they got down.

Or not. . . because, automatically, he thought of who else might be there. People who lived here. People he wanted to avoid, or who wanted to avoid him.

‘Hello. Neville Forster speaking.’

‘Hello, Mr Forster. This is James Sawday. I work for
Kudos
, the men’s—’

‘Yes,’ Forster said, ‘I’ve heard of it.’

‘Right, well, I’m down here to write an article on—’

‘The Grancombe Axe Killer?’

‘Yes,’ James said. ‘How did you—’

Forster laughed. ‘Call it an educated guess. And here’s another one: you want some help with the background.’

‘Right again. I take it I’m not the first person who’s called you up?’

‘The first this week, at least. You do have that privilege. I was under the impression that the national press had had enough of the story for now. Till the next death anyhow. Which might, of course, not happen for another decade on current form.’

‘It’s a feature article I’m doing. An overview. And I’d appreciate the opportunity to run a few things past you. I’ve got a lot of stuff from the articles already written, but there are a few gaps I wouldn’t mind filling.’

‘Rather like the police.’

‘Quite.’

‘Do you drink, Mr Sawday?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Do you drink?’ Forster repeated.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Meet me in The Cove. It’s down on the front.’

‘Will Tawnside’s place. I know it.’ James rolled his eyes as soon as the words had left his mouth.

‘You’re extremely well informed, Mr Sawday. . .’

‘It’s my job.’

Forster grunted. ‘Only your information’s a little out of date. Tawnside’s dead. Heart attack. Two years ago. They found him slumped behind the bar, bottle of whisky still in his hand. Tragic.’

‘Right. . .’

‘No matter, though. The Cove’s still running. If anything, the beer’s improved. Half an hour suit you?’

‘Perfect. Thank you.’

‘No, Mr Sawday. Thank you.’

‘What for?’

‘The drinks you’re about to buy me, of course.’

*

It wasn’t hard to spot Neville Forster. Not because he matched up to James’s stereotype of a regional editor: overweight, balding, mid-fifties, smoking and drinking his way towards retirement. (In fact, he was around the same age as James, athletic-looking, with thick black hair.) But because Neville Forster was the only person in The Cove aside from a surly-looking woman behind the bar,

Forster nodded at him right away, James obviously embodying whatever stereotype the editor held of a London magazine hack.

‘Mr Sawday, I presume,’ he said, standing up and shaking James’s hand.

‘James, please.’

Forster smiled and drained the remains of his pint. ‘Same again,’ he said with a smile.

James read the insignia on the glass. ‘Two Bass, please,’ he told the barmaid.

The men stood in silence as she poured. Then James clinked his pint against Neville’s.

‘Cheers,’ he said, talking a deep swig, enjoying the sensation of the cool liquid hitting the bottom of his empty stomach.

Forster drank deep. ‘Rugby season,’ he commented. ‘Got to keep my weight up.’

‘Who d’you play for? Grancombe?’

Forster nodded his head. ‘Second Fifteen. Nothing too serious.’

‘In it for the social life, yeah?’

‘Partly. Do you play?’

‘Not since school.’

‘Where was that?’

James named his old school.

‘Boarding school, huh?’

‘Yes. What about you? You a local boy?’

‘Yep.’ Forster took another drink. ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, but how old are you?’

‘Twenty-seven. Why?’

‘Just curious. Like you, I’m sure. It comes with the job.’ He smiled, scrutinised James’s face. ‘I’d swear I almost recognise you. Have you been down here on holiday before?’

James felt uncomfortable, like he was playing poker and Forster reckoned he had him beat. Forget it. He’d never met him before. Just being friendly, that’s all.

‘No,’ James said, ‘this is my first visit.’

Forster snorted. ‘Well, then, without wanting to make you look like a total arse. . . do you mind telling me how you know Will Tawnside used to run this place?’

James bluffed, ‘I remembered his name from one of the articles. The police had him in for questioning after Jack Dawes was killed.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘What?’

‘You didn’t remember his name from any article, because his name wasn’t mentioned in any article. Believe me, I know. I’ve read them all.’

James didn’t reply. He wasn’t sure what the appropriate adult response was to someone who’d just called him a liar and had then gone on to prove that this was the case. He held up his hands in surrender. Honesty was probably the only option now. Either that or tell Forster to piss off, and walk. But he needed Forster, so that wasn’t an option. Besides, aside from what had just happened, James liked the man. He spoke his mind. No bullshit. He looked like someone James could trust.

‘You got me,’ he said.

Forster raised his glass, grinned. ‘I know. And now I’m intrigued. Why lie?’