The Convenience of Lies (17 page)

Twenty-Eight

The name Blackrod derived from words meaning bleak clearing in the language of those from across the German Sea who invaded after the Roman legions left and the Dark Ages began.

In
time, forests came to be replaced by farms. Stone cottages were built, women wove fine cloth and men lowered themselves into the earth to dig for coal. The town grew and had a railway to serve its brick works and factories.

But
as McCall drove down the Roman road which was now Blackrod’s main street, he saw scant evidence of the industries where those who’d once lived in the long, unlovely terraces he passed had worked.

He
noticed a sign for Ros Thorne Photography in a parade of shops. He parked and looked into a window display of joyful wedding pictures and children’s portraits. Ms Thorne was guillotining prints at her counter, a woman of forty summers surviving on the happiness of others.

McCall
entered in his lawyerly blue suit, white shirt and dark tie and carrying a leather briefcase. He could be mistaken for anything other than what he was. There was rarely the need to lie when people made assumptions of their own.

He
smiled at Ms Thorne and said he’d a reel of film urgently needing to be developed and printed as blow-ups.

‘Sorry,
I couldn’t get round to doing that for a couple days at the earliest.’

McCall
kept the beguiling smile going through his fatigue and disappointment. He implied this was a delicate legal matter so he’d pay over the odds for any assistance.

‘If
it took you a couple of hours, I’d pay for four… in cash, if you wished.’

‘There’s
nothing dodgy about these pictures, is there? I can’t afford to get mixed up in anything dodgy, not round here.’

‘You’ll
see them for yourself,’ McCall said. ‘And I don’t doubt you’d quickly work out what sort of case this is.’

‘Not
a messy divorce, is it?’

‘I
wouldn’t be allowed to comment, would I?’

*

It was still warm and the landlady of the Blackhorse opened the pub’s front windows to catch whatever breeze might pass. The night sky was sour with sodium glare from all the street lighting between Blackrod and the distant Pennine Moors.

This
had been a tiring day. McCall sat in the bar with a Scotch and much on his mind. But the news from the hospital was encouraging. Lexie was stable.

Hester
might have rung him but didn’t so he took it she and Ruby had no problems at Garth. He would home in on Benwick next morning, check the guest book and ask if anyone recognised the photograph he’d taken of him by the reservoir.

Ros
Thorne arrived with a large manila envelope as promised. She declined McCall’s offer of a drink. She’d her wedding commission to finish. He went to his room and spread the snatched pictures of Gillespie on the bed.

It
was the final shot of him sitting with the other union man and an unidentified male at the trattoria window that made McCall look twice. He stared hard at the blow-up but there was no doubt. Inexplicably, the third man was his very own Deep Throat, Roly Vickers.

*

A car’s headlights cut through the trees along the pot-holed drive to Garth Hall then swept onto the front drive and threw shadows across the bedroom Hester shared with Ruby. Hester stood behind the curtains and looked down.

It
was a police patrol car. This made her more anxious, not less. Two uniformed officers got out and walked round to the back of the house.

‘You
must stay in this room, Ruby,’ Hester said. ‘Tell me you understand.’

Ruby
nodded and carried on drawing. Hester went across the landing to the bathroom and watched from there. A sergeant and a constable shone their torches into the stables. It was padlocked but they could see McCall’s Morgan inside. This was what they were after. A few moments later, Hester heard the front door being knocked.

It
took some deep breathing before she was calm enough to open it. The sergeant said they wanted to speak to Francis McCall.

‘He’s
not here,’ Hester said.

‘But
his car is.’

‘Yes,
but he’s working away. Why do you want him?’

‘It’s
the police in Oxfordshire who want him. There’s been a suspicious death and they think Francis can help them with their inquiries.’

‘How
would he know anything about a suspicious death?’

‘It
isn’t for us to say but the police down south want to interview him.’

‘Well,
if he rings me, I’ll tell him.’

‘Do
you mind if we come in and have a look round?’

‘Have
you got a search warrant?’

‘No,
but we could get one if we need to.’

‘You’d
still be wasting your time. Mr McCall’s in London for a few days.’

‘How
do we know he’s not hiding inside?’

‘You
don’t but he’s not and I don’t tell lies.’

‘So
who’s moving that curtain up there?’

‘That’s
my bedroom. It’ll be the cat, he sleeps in there.’

‘A
cat… really? So what relation are you to Francis, Miss…?’

‘Miss
Lloyd and I’m not a relation, I’m his housekeeper.’

‘And
you’re stuck out here, miles from anywhere in this big old house with just a cat for protection,’ he said. ‘Not of a nervous disposition, are you?’

‘I
was raised in the wilds of Oregon so there’s not much that frightens me. Now, are we done here?’

‘For
the time being, yes. But we may well be back.’

Half
an hour later, Hester drove to a phone box and rang McCall, not in a panic but unsettled by events beyond her control. She told him how frightened Ruby had been, thinking they were being followed in Shrewsbury.

‘And
now the police have just pitched up,’ she said. ‘They say there’s been a suspicious death and you’re involved. You have to tell me what’s going on, Mac.’

‘It’ll
be Hoare, the PR man. He’s died but the cops will use his death as an excuse to find out where I am.’

‘But
why would they want to do that?’

‘I
don’t know but like everything else, it’ll be to do with Ruby’s case. Is she with you now?’

‘Hasn’t
left my side nor will she. Will you be back to visit Lexie tomorrow night?’

‘I’ll
do my best but cover for me if I can’t.’

Her
coins ran out so she and Ruby drove home through the moonlit country lanes. On such a night, as soft and warm as a lover’s first kiss, Hester ought to have been lying in a hammock on the orchard lawn, staring at the stars and questioning all those inner beliefs and thoughts which influenced her outer self.

It
was said an unexamined life had no merit - and that wasn’t in Hester’s soul plan for this incarnation. But instead of visualising her universe, she was assailed by fears of kidnap, of menacing telephone calls and suspicious deaths.

All
this worldly wickedness swirled around the motherless child at her side. Who could possibly want to harm her? For what reason or purpose? Every door and every window at Garth Hall would henceforth be locked against evildoers. Ruby would be protected by Hester this time.

*

The landlady of the Blackhorse offered McCall a full English breakfast next day. But all his underlying worries caused him to feel nauseous enough without a fry-up.

‘Just
cereal and toast, please’.

‘You
look quite pale, Mr Sydenham,’ she said. ‘Not poorly, I hope.’

This
was McCall’s first outing using the moody name on Cyril Loader’s even moodier
driving
licence.

‘No,
I’m fine honestly, just not too hungry.’

He
was queasily aware of the pub’s early morning smells - stale cigarette smoke, last
night’s
spilt beer, disinfectant. The landlady brought his order then hovered out of hospitable curiosity.

‘You
from London, did you say?’

‘Down
that way, yes.’

‘All
that crime and rushing about there, not sure I could cope with it.’

McCall
smiled and had reason to suggest she share his pot of tea.

‘Might
as well,’ she said. ‘I’ve no other guests in today.’

He
poured for them both. They chatted about the pub trade and the weather before he reached in his briefcase for the close-up he’d taken of Benwick by the reservoir.

‘Don’t
know if you can help me with this but do you recognise this man?’

She
gave a canny half smile and asked if McCall was a private detective.

‘Not
quite but I’m anxious to trace him.’

‘Yes,
I know him. What’s he done that you’re after him?’

‘It’s
complicated and rather personal but would you tell me how you know him?’

‘Because
he’s stayed here a few times. In fact, he only left a couple of hours before you arrived.’

McCall
cursed silently. He’d seen only one other name above his in the register - a Mr Terry Boland. There was no address but he should have spotted the clue in the surname, cribbed from the street where the Greens lived.

‘So
what brings our Mr Boland up this way so often?’

‘He’s
a bird watcher, mad keen on it, apparently.’

‘I
didn’t know that. Where does he go round here?’

‘No
idea but someone in the bar said they’d seen him a while back on the other side of Euxton, on a golf course up there.’

‘You
mean playing golf?’

‘No,
watching birds. Got all the right kit, he had. Camouflage outfit, binoculars, even
a
video camera.’

‘So
which golf course was this?’

‘There’s
only one that way, Shaw Hill, it’s called. Very posh, got this lovely old house
they’ve
turned into a country club.’

‘I
might head up there and see if he’s still about. What sort of car is he driving now?’

‘They’re
all the same to me, love. No idea.’

‘Is
the golf course easy to find?’

‘It’s
right next to what we call the gunpowder factory round here.’

‘Gunpowder
factory?’

‘Where
they make the bombs and weapons and such like. It’s all supposed to be top secret and we’re not meant to know what goes on there… but we do.’

So
this was where Benwick’s trail was leading. McCall now had even more reasons to be cheerful.

*

Lexie believed herself to be in a field of tulips - vermillion, lilac, violet, apricot, black, white and every shade between. Their fleshy-bladed leaves brushed her bare legs as she passed. But where was this place?

She
snapped a flower head off its stalk and put it to her lips to kiss. But within its satin chalice of petals was a heart burned black by passion, all but spent now. In front of her was a clearing and in this space, a million more deflowered tulips, tumbled into a great heap like an unmade bed.

Lexie
lay on her back to luxuriate in the waxy silkiness of the blooms against her skin, sank ever deeper into all that rainbow beauty being crushed beneath her spread-eagled nakedness. Then she found her own velvety self as she first had when crossing the border from innocence to experience.

But
that is not enough. She called into the silence for a lover and her voice echoed into the past. Who will smile gently now, genuflect before her and offer the sacrament she wants most? Whose back will she mark… McCall’s or Evan’s or one whose name and face she can no longer recall?

A
man’s hands cup her breasts. They move over her belly and further down so she reveals herself to him, arches to receive the pleasure he offers. And in that moment, she is entered yet doesn’t feel what was expected.

She
was being knifed open. Cut, sliced, ripped apart till her very essence was excised and removed. And the blood seeped from her wounds and discolours the flowers where she lay until all turn crimson and she and they are nothing but flames.

Lexie
was no longer female. Her life was saved but lost. They had neutered her. An intensity of white light shone in her eyes so she saw only the wraith-like shapes of strangers floating by.