The Rotting Spot (A Bruce and Bennett Mystery) Read online

  ‘Nice ornament, Ms Bruce,’ he began. ‘Ingredient for one of your potions?’

  ‘Homeopathic remedies are prepared from bones, shells, poisons, honey bees, whole tarantulas, so it’s not as far- fetched as all that.’ Erica replied, determined not to be provoked. She would need him to listen to her after all.

  ‘But yes, it is a kind of ornament, it’s a horse.’

  ‘Where did you get that – haven’t got mafia connections, have you?’

  ‘No, don’t worry Inspector, you won’t find it in your bed. Someone I know dug it up from a field – some beloved pet pony’s grave. He gave it to me when he realised he couldn’t display it in case someone recognised it.’

  ‘So why dig it up in the first place?’

  ‘Sheer skull-hunter’s obsession, Inspector. He knew it was there and just had to have it. Anyway, I won’t waste your time or mine on equine exhumation.’ Equine exhumation? What the fuck’s happened to my language? It’s gone all pompous … ‘Would you like a drink?’ She switched on her poppy-red kettle. ‘I’ve got mango, echinacea, or lemon and ginger.’ Perversely, she didn’t mention her stash of ‘real’ tea.

  He chose lemon and ginger, clearly as the least offensive, and she handed him the email printout while she made tea.

  ‘Well?’ She put the tea beside him, ready to expound Blake’s philosophy of hell.

  ‘Steve Jackman said nothing about Molly when we talked to him.’ He turned to look at her, his face disturbingly close. His eyelashes were unfairly long, like most men’s. The cartoonists always got that wrong.

  ‘If Lucy hadn’t talked about her by name before, he could have thought she was a mate, who you’d talk to when you went through Lucy’s contact list.’

  Why am I defending him? she thought.

  ‘In that case, he’d have no reason not to mention it to the Seatons, but he didn’t.’

  The steam from his tea settled in a sheen of tiny droplets on the lean planes of his face as he drank. As he swallowed, Erica watched the drink go down his throat into the open neck of his shirt.

  ‘You’ll have to take that up with him. It was other bit I wanted to talk about. Sooner murder … I think it’s meaningful … ‘sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires’.

  ‘I’d say it tells us a great deal about her state of mind when she went.’ Will sounded grim. ‘I don’t like the sound of this at all – murdering infants! If it wasn’t that she left young Toby behind, I’d be concerned for his safety. I think we need to get a psychologist to look at this.’

  ‘That was one of our favourite quotes from William Blake, when we were teenagers.’ She moved to sit opposite Will, who was pushing his dark hair up into spikes. It made him look more approachable. ‘It’s not about murdering infants, it’s about the danger of nursing unacted desires.’

  ‘You mean you should do whatever you like, regardless? It sounds to me like Lucy’s having some sort of breakdown.’

  ‘Not necessarily. It might mean that Lucy, a gifted actress, ‘unacted’ her desire, and may be now acting – literally – it out. But that’s not what Blake meant!’

  ‘Are you qualified to speak for William Blake? You a medium as well?’ Will flattened his hair down viciously. He had good reason to dislike the alternative therapy brigade, but to let it keep showing like this was unprofessional. His nephew’s bright little face flashed into his mind …

  ‘Nurse!’

  Startled, Will looked round, thinking Erica was calling for an assistant.

  She went on. ‘It all hinges on the word nurse! To nurture, to breast feed.’

  Will kept his eyes on Erica’s so obviously he may as well have looked at her breasts, as the word fell between them like a sex bomb.

  ‘If you feed your unacted desires, by brooding over them, they’ll break out, in some pervy way … like celibate priests abusing children. Blake’s prophetic vision beat Freud’s rank misogyny by centuries. In another poem, he says, ‘I was angry with my friend, I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe … It doesn’t matter what Blake really meant, anyway, what matters is what Lucy thought he meant, and I do know about that. What I don’t get, is what she means by it in this email. Is it Lucy who has unacted desires, or someone else?’

  Will leapt in. ‘You said yourself she wanted to act. Maybe she’s gone to do just that. Maybe she felt tied down by Toby, maybe she even felt tempted to murder him, as one of the factors keeping her from it.’

  ‘No, Lucy would never,’ Erica began, then paused. It had just occurred to her that it might well have suited Liz for Lucy to have a child. It made her more needful of help from her family, and more likely therefore to toe the line. Go it alone, an actress with a baby in tow, – or we’ll help and support you to become a doctor. Could Liz have even engineered the pregnancy? Given Lucy duff contraception? Will watched thoughts flicker over Erica’s expressive face. She’d had a shower, or been swimming, because a tiny bead of water suddenly rolled down from beneath her thick blonde hair, down her neck and into the hollow of her collarbone. He looked away, feeling an absurd desire to lick it off. A desire that must remain unacted. Whether this case was something serious or a fuss about nothing, he couldn’t hit on a potential witness. He pulled himself together.

  ‘What’s up? Worried I might be right?’ His words broke in on her thoughts. She shook herself free of them, scorning her paranoid suspicions of Liz as a control freak. She must overcome her prejudice where Liz was concerned.

  ‘Oh, I was just thinking it’s odd, a medical student getting pregnant; a gynae consultant’s daughter especially.’

  ‘Just a mistake. Medics get drunk like any other students, as you know – but you were never a medical student, were you?’

  Her eyes sparked at him. Definitely green.

  ‘Whatever you think about my profession, I practise legally. But as a matter of fact, at uni, I had plenty of opportunity to observe the drunkenness of students, medical and otherwise.’

  ‘The law is somewhat lax in the alternative therapy area,’ Will heard himself say. Why was he using such uptight expressions? Why did he keep needling her? She’d contacted him with the only information about Lucy they’d had so far. It wasn’t just that other charlatan, conning his sister; he wanted to follow that water drop wherever it went. Reminding himself Erica was a con artist preying on the gullible was a defence against her obvious attractiveness.

  ‘Harold Shipman, anyone? Pity the police didn’t do anything to stop him sooner – there’s nothing ‘lax’ about the law against serial killing.’

  She shoots, she scores! He attempted to control his own anger at her needling, he’d started it after all.

  ‘Look Ms Bruce, thanks for bringing this email to my attention.’ He unfolded his long limbs from the chair. ‘I’ll talk to Steve Jackman again. But it sounds from this as if she did go voluntarily.’

  ‘The thing is, Inspector, I’m really worried about Lucy. It’s what she says about Molly – taken together with the Blake quote…’

  ‘Mental disturbance. Or histrionic attention-seeking. You said the Blake stuff wasn’t as bad as it sounded.’ He was irritated. She stood in front of him.

  ‘What if Lucy did find out something about Molly’s disappearance? What if that knowledge put her in danger? From someone in Stonehead, even her own family?’

  ‘Oh, come on now.’ His tone implied that Lucy wasn’t the only one guilty of histrionic attention-seeking. ‘Why not tell someone? Poor Mrs Westfield has suffered for quarter of a century; even knowing her daughter is dead, say, would be better than the uncertainty.’

  ‘What if a friend, family member, whatever, was involved, but Lucy had no proof? Or she just had a strong suspicion? She could alienate her whole family, accusing someone without proof.’

  ‘We haven’t found anything to bear that out.’

  ‘But if I’m right, there could be two outcomes. Either she went back to Stonehead to confront someone, and they
… well, did something to stop her revealing what she knew. Or, she panicked and ran, realising that she was in danger! Which means either she’s dead, or she’s hiding, still at risk from Molly’s killer …’

  ‘Look.’ Will put out his hands as if to grasp Erica’s arms, and stopped just short of contact, seeing her stiffen. He remembered the feeling of her small strong body that day on the beach.

  ‘There’s no evidence Molly is dead, let alone that Lucy found out about a killer.’

  ‘So reopen that investigation, find out what happened to Molly – she’s never been heard of in twenty-five years! Then Lucy, if she’s still alive, can come back to her son! And if she’s dead, you’ll get the person or persons who killed both of them!’

  Will raised his hand and started flattening down his hair, forgetting it was already flat. He stepped round Erica.

  ‘Molly’s case was investigated at the time! She wasn’t murdered, or abducted, she ran away; there are scores of witnesses to her reappearance at a schoolmate’s Christmas party. No doubt she went to London and either sank or swam like all the other runaways. There’s no way my Super will authorise reopening the case with no evidence but your feelings.’

  He glanced at the horse’s skull as he spoke. The feelings of a weirdo, he obviously meant.

  ‘I see.’ Erica spoke quietly to his back, and he swung round, even though his exit was now clear. ‘I might have guessed. Typical of the narrow stereotyped thinking of a hierarchical structure.’

  ‘What? Oh, now look here…’

  ‘Alternative = nutcase. Respectable GP = not possibly serial killer. Woman = hysterical. Runaway not abducted, therefore not murdered. She might have left because of abuse by a family member or friend of her parents! I bet they didn’t often look into that 25 years ago! She might have run off voluntarily and been murdered later! If she was living rough or hiding out somewhere, it would make her vulnerable wouldn’t it? It doesn’t have to be one or the other!’

  Her contempt stung him.

  ‘Women walk out every day, Erica, like it or not, even women like Lucy. The Seatons and Westfields have suffered enough without slanderous accusations. Just keep out of this.’

  ‘I would, if I thought you’d do something about it! Lucy thought I’d understand! She’s away from her son, how long can that go on without traumatising him permanently? Oh, to hell with it. I’ll let you know if I hear from Lucy or find any new evidence.’

  Will left without another word. He felt somehow diminished, even though she was totally unreasonable. Erica was angry, but not surprised. She hadn’t had much faith in the authorities since her fat days; when the school had not taken action to stop the bullies, she’d rung the police in desperation. They’d told her to stop wasting their time. Lucy had thought of her; looking back, she’d treated Lucy badly, letting Liz win. God knew she didn’t want to come on like VI Warshawski, but looked like it was down to her this time. She’d said she owed Lucy, and here was her chance to pay that debt. Almost like it was meant. And she did have some resources. She had the name and email address of Toby’s father, Steve Jackman. She could talk to him, without involving Lucy’s family. She also knew Stonehead and the inhabitants. Mickey Spence, Liz, Seymour, Peggy. Stacey Reed.

  Evening, Wednesday 18th June

  Stonehead

  Paul Reed pulled up outside his house and switched off the engine. He sat gathering himself, before entering his home. How had his life turned out this way? Julie’s endless discontented whining, asking for reassurances he’d wearied of giving years ago. Nearly a quarter century in a boring job to support three kids who saw him as a walking chequebook. And now Stacey’s baby, filling the house with noise, smells, and more martyrdom for Julie.

  A gull swooped level with his car, seeming to look inside with its cruel little eye, taunting him with its freedom. He thought of Molly, as he so often did even now. Those late seventies, when his generation seemed to have it all. He’d been crazy about her, his first love, in spite of, or maybe partly because of, her being out of his league. Niece of the Seatons at Hex Tower house. In all the top sets at school. Prettiest girl in her year. But he’d been handsome then. Skinny, hollow chested, as was the fashion in the Seventies, before working out had been invented, in skin-tight trousers which practically showed a bloke’s religion. Cheesecloth shirts. Long hair. Platform boots.

  Come on Paul, he told himself, looking down at the creased synthetic catalogue suit he wore to work. Julie was more your mark all along. Molly would have dumped you, moved on. Though he’d been her first lover, he was sure of that. Those frustrated sessions on the sofa before she plucked up courage to go to the clinic for the pill, terrified her parents would find out. That very fear had added spice to their inexpert lovemaking. Molly had been so turned on by knowing she was defying her mother’s religious scruples, more so than by his efforts perhaps.

  ‘My mum would kill me if she knew,’ she’d say as they made love. ‘Maybe God is watching us right now! Maybe we’ll go to hell!’ It had scared him sometimes, to tell the truth. Her kinkiness, and innocence combined. He’d always worried she’d go right off the rails where he couldn’t follow.

  Then she’d dropped him, just like that. Said her mum had found her pills. Gone off and worried them all sick, before turning up at that sodding party all bloody superior, said she had someone else, better than him. He’d wanted never to see her again after that, and he got his wish. He’d started going out with Julie on the rebound, but had fallen for her in the end. Julie was right for him, and for a time they’d been happy, but Julie couldn’t forget Molly. Molly had never really left despite all his efforts.

  So now he stayed out as much as possible, drinking with the blokes after work, having sad little affairs with women he didn’t even like. He was too jaded and tired now to feel love or hate. Endurance, just living out the days. Getting balder and paunchier, nothing ahead but retirement.

  He walked down the path, head bowed in anticipation of Julie’s reproachful tirade. The gull uttered a series of harsh mocking cries and dropped a splatter of black and white guano on his windscreen as it wheeled out over the sea.

  Paul entered the dark narrow hall of the terraced house, which stood on the cliff in a spectacular position but with all its windows facing inland, except the back ones which looked onto the high back yard wall. The radiators were draped in damp baby clothes. In the front room, Stacey slumped smoking in front of the TV screen.

  ‘Hello, Stacey!’ Too hearty. ‘Where’s Noosh?’

  ‘With me mam.’ She didn’t move her eyes from the screen and as he left the room, he heard her mutter something that sounded like ‘Fkn loser!’

  Julie appeared, Noosh in her arms. He braced himself, but she looked almost animated.

  ‘Any dinner on the go?’

  ‘Lucy Seaton’s still missing. Her car, her money, little Toby, all left behind! Folk in the village are saying it looks a bit funny. Well it is funny, isn’t it?’

  ‘Hilarious.’

  Julie often said things were funny, but very rarely laughed. But tonight she seemed, well, gleeful. ‘Lightning striking twice, like. And her just done her doctor’s exams! The Seatons won’t like that.’

  Her pleasure in their trouble, the mess in the house, the stab of feeling he’d experienced at Molly’s name, were too much for Paul.

  ‘Just stopped off to tell you I’m meeting some blokes,’ he said. He headed back for the door, hearing Julie’s more familiar theme song behind him.

  ‘Oh, right, just go off, leave me with the baby to look after as per usual,’ before the door closed. He almost ran to the Stone Arms, solid, warm and welcoming. Lights gleamed from its deep set windows, and he could smell pie and chips. He’d go in the lounge. Seymour Seaton would be in the bar, as always. Why did Julie resent Molly’s family so much? At least she was alive, while Molly …

  Noosh wasn’t hungry, and Julie slipped the teat into her own mouth, sucking down the thick curdled stuff desperately,
though it tasted horrible. Nobody cared. She had nobody to talk to. She wondered about that girl who’d helped Stacey, according to Peggy Westfield anyway. Maybe she’d be able to help with all Julie’s aches and pains. The doctor did nothing, hardly looked at you. Couldn’t get you out the surgery quick enough. Nobody understood how guilt could eat at you.

  11

  Friday 20th June, Clearburn Park

  At the park lake, Erica made for the little jetty Steve’d specified. A tall black guy, with fashionably shaven head, his leanness making him look thoughtful rather than thuggish, stood by it. A little boy, with lighter skin, and dark curls, was reaching inside a plastic bag his dad was holding. His face was intent, giving the simple action the significance it holds for a young child. She brought her quickened breathing under control, slowing down. The child, surely Toby? Pulled some slices of bread out of the bag and his father just stopped him in time from throwing in a whole slice at once. The ducks, expert at recognising baked goods at 100 metres, headed smoothly towards them, as Steve helped his son break the bread. Toby flung pills of jagged bread with the abrupt, stiff throw of the very young, his fingers spreading like starfish with the effort of letting go. Lucy’s son. I could have been his auntie Ricci, she thought, watched him grow, if I’d stayed her friend. She walked over. Toby was intent on the ducks, which were vying for his attention in an almost threatening way, but Steve watched Erica approach in a way that made it clear he was expecting her.

  ‘Erica?’

  ‘Hi – Steve?’ She pushed back her thick hair, looking up at him with keen interest. He had a serious face, small, flat ears. Automatically, she registered the absence of beer belly. Attractive, in a quiet way. ‘And Toby?’

  He was already looking past her at the child, watchful in case he fell in the lake. ‘Aye, that’s him.’ He didn’t have a local accent, more like Yorkshire – Leeds?