The secret of anatomy, p.17
The Secret of Anatomy, page 17
She jumped at the noise and then cried out; the sudden movement made her back feel as though someone was scraping rusty nails down it. If this is Elliott again, she thought furiously, he’ll get more than he fucking bargained for next time I’m a panther. She entered the lounge as quickly as her back would allow her and picked up the phone.
“What?” she snapped.
“Tametia, this is Mathilde.”
Her spirits plummeted. “Mathilde,” she repeated woodenly.
“How are you feeling, dear?” Mathilde’s voice was all motherly concern, but behind it Tametia heard the insinuation: Because we want that bottle now.
“I don’t know,” said Tametia. “My back still hurts, and you should see the marks. They’re horrible, Mathilde.”
Even as she said the words she realised how they sounded—like a whiny excuse, an admission of defeat. Before Mathilde could comment therefore, she added, “But I won’t give up. I’ll get that bottle for you.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Mathilde sweetly. “In fact, that’s why I’m ringing. I’ve got information that will help you.”
“From Danny?” said Tametia.
“From the oracle.” Though there was no inflection in Mathilde’s words, they sounded nevertheless like a mild rebuke.
“That’s what I meant,” said Tametia. She had never liked the term “oracle.” It had been coined a long time ago and sounded a bit naff to her, a bit Dennis Wheatley mumbo-jumbo. It didn’t help that it was also the name of a TV information service. “What did he say?” she asked.
Mathilde told her—about the man named Burgess and how she would find him. And before long, despite the pain and her fear of what it might mean, Tametia was sighing with relief.
Chapter Twenty-One
The child, whom David simply thought of as Damien, pointed at the TV and burbled incoherently. He turned and fixed his over-bright eyes on David as if seeking approval. David forced a smile and nodded, feeling uncomfortable. The cartoon only added to his belief that just lately the world had shifted disconcertingly out of phase, shunting him into a reality that was subtly different to the one he was used to. The creatures in the cartoon looked like brightly coloured condoms wearing armour. They spoke in squeaky American accents and argued a lot. Like the situation comedy that had assailed him through the wall of his room a couple of nights before, the programme—its sickening primary colours, its crude artwork—made him obscurely depressed.
Yesterday, after completing his investigations in Walthamstow Library, David had spent hours walking round the area, asking the proprietors in every shop and pub he passed whether they had ever heard of an Inspector Kerslake, now retired. He had never realised before just how appropriate the phrase “banging your head against a brick wall” was. By the time he returned to the B&B, around ten thirty, he had a headache that felt akin to his brain being squeezed between the corrugated jaws of a very large vice.
He’d been frustrated, miserable, exhausted and hungry. He sat in his room watching Whose Line Is It Anyway? and eating a takeaway Chinese which had turned cold and glutinous in its tin-foil tray during the ten-minute walk home. He was especially fed up because not only had his enquiries come to a dead end, but he had encountered discouragement and even, in one or two cases, barely restrained hostility. It had reached the stage where he almost dreaded having to say the word “Inspector,” because the instant he did so he would see shutters come down behind eyes, lips clamp tight, and nostrils flare as if he had suddenly become nothing more than a bad smell in a small room.
And what was even worse was the fact that he was going to have to go through it all again today if he wanted to continue pursuing this particular line of enquiry. He did wonder whether speaking to Kerslake would actually achieve anything in the long run, or whether he was simply pussyfooting around the periphery in order to put off the inevitable encounter with Malcolm Marshall. This thought depressed him somewhat, but he tried to deal with it by telling himself firmly that forewarned was forearmed.
He sat now in the big kitchen-cum-dining room, shovelling down his fried breakfast as quickly as he could in order to escape before Damien started climbing on him. The toddler had a habit of doing this. Yesterday David had entered the kitchen to find the boy hanging like a chimpanzee from the neck of an old man. The man looked about to expire, or at least buckle under the toddler’s weight, but had never once complained. Damien’s mother had been bustling constantly in and out, but appeared not to notice that her son was strangling one of her elderly guests.
It was crazy but David was already missing Ellen and the girls so much it hurt. He’d spent the last two months ignoring them, resenting them, but now that they weren’t around he felt like a big chunk of himself had been torn away. He ought to ring them, he told himself for the umpteenth time, and once again felt like a shit for not yet feeling ready to take a walk through that particular minefield. Perhaps it was only an excuse, but at the moment his life felt like a series of wounds that had to be cleaned and stitched up not only one at a time but also in the correct order.
Ten minutes later he was standing on the street outside the house, the smell of exhaust fumes filling his nostrils. It was a drizzly, cold day. He pulled his Bogart around him, feeling the reassuring weight of the bottle in his right-hand pocket counterbalanced by the London A-Z in his left. David liked his Bogart. It made him feel crumpled and ordinary but at the same time kind of stylish, like Bob Peck in Edge of Darkness. He liked its deep pockets, the way it flapped around him when he was striding, the way he could casually flip up the collar when it was cold or raining and it would stay where he had put it and wouldn’t hang like limp bat wings and make him look stupid.
Today, though, he was wishing he had some other coat to wear. Today he didn’t want to look like Bob Peck. He didn’t want to look remotely like a policeman, didn’t want to feel as though there were daggers, even imaginary ones, pointing at his back wherever he went.
Because the pubs didn’t open until eleven, David spent the first two hours of that day wandering in and out of local shops, asking questions. He received a slightly better reaction than yesterday, but only because he had learned a little from that experience and had now come up with what he thought was a feasible excuse for his search. Whenever anyone threatened to become obtuse or hostile, David told them that Kerslake used to be a friend of his father’s and that he was planning a surprise party for the old man’s eightieth birthday, trying to track down as many of his old friends as he could. This seemed to go down quite well with most people, especially the older shop owners who were appreciative of such things. One or two of them even admitted to remembering Kerslake from his days on the manor, though none of them had any idea of his present whereabouts.
By eleven twenty, David was feeling weary. His feet were aching and he was damp and cold from the rain which had been falling lightly all morning. He decided it was time to hit the pubs. On his perambulations he had noted down in his A-Z the whereabouts of any he passed. He consulted the book now and saw that the nearest was a couple of streets away. Memorising the route, he slipped the A-Z back into the pocket of his Bogart and hurried in that direction, collar turned up, head hunched against the rain.
The pub, The George IV, was a large seedy-looking establishment positioned just off the intersection of two main roads. Fish and chip wrappers from the shop next door dozed in its shadow or scuttled drunkenly along the pavement outside. A large white graffito on its side wall read JESUS EATS CHILDREN. When he was a few feet from the main door of the pub a black fuzz of litter on its top step unfurled and streaked away from him. It was a cat.
He went inside. The room he walked into was so gloomy that he could barely make out the bar until his eyes had adjusted. The threadbare flock wallpaper had acquired a sludgy brown film, which David guessed from the smell was the accumulation of by-products from cooking fat, cigarette smoke and sweat. The place was warm, but unpleasantly so, the air hazy and thick, almost sticky in texture. David took off his Bogart and carefully draped it over one arm. He felt the weight of the bottle, swaying slightly in its pouch of material. He wanted to reach into the pocket and close a hand around it, whether for reassurance or simply to steady it he was not sure. However he felt reluctant to do so here, as if the bottle would be perceived as something valuable, like a wallet fat with money.
He made his way to the bar, feeling as though his rubber-soled shoes were clinging leech-like to the carpet with each step, tearing off wads of fluff and fibres as he pulled away. The pub’s customers seemed little more than bulky brown shadows. When he looked closely he saw slow turtle–like faces regarding him. A bar stool loomed like a brown-capped mushroom. He put his hand out and felt its stickiness. Somewhere in the haze at the other end of the bar, glasses chinked, a cash register pinged, a buzz of words was exchanged. Then the barman was sliding towards him, plump and slug-like.
“Yes, mate?” he said in a North London accent. He had greased wavy hair, a mottled bug-eyed face. Fuzzy blue tattoos bruised his hairy arms. He wore a white t-shirt with a Southern Comfort logo on it, stained yellow beneath the armpits.
“Er … a bottle of Beck’s please,” said David.
“Bottle o’ Beck’s,” repeated the barman as if correcting David’s pronunciation. He turned to a fridge behind him, which opened with a sucking sound. “Want a glass with this?” he asked, holding up the bottle like a cudgel.
“Er … no thanks,” said David.
The barman nodded and picked up a bottle opener that was sitting on a ledge by the cash register. He removed the metal cap with a flick of the wrist and placed the bottle on the bar in front of David. David handed him a five pound note. As the barman turned again to the cash register, David heard a loud gulping noise by his left elbow. He turned to see a scrawny old man in a tartan cap perched on a bar stool four feet away. The man was tilting a pint glass up to his mouth and drinking noisily.
The old man gasped and thumped his glass down rather too heavily, as if the weight of it had been getting too much for him. Beer slopped up the inside of the glass and out, splashing the cuff of the man’s blue serge suit. He caught David’s eye and winked, simultaneously cupping his grizzled chin to catch the beer which was dribbling down it. David smiled quickly, then turned back to the barman who was holding out his change.
The barman dropped coins into David’s cupped palm, his fingertips, cold and damp as clay, brushing David’s hand. Before the man could turn away, David leaned forward and, his voice unconsciously quietening a little, said, “Excuse me.”
The barman looked surprised. His upper lip glistened with sweat. “Yeah?”
“I wonder if you can help me. I’m looking for a bloke called Kerslake. He used to be an Inspector in the police force around here.”
The barman immediately looked wary, raising his head a little, eyes narrowing. It was a response that David was used to. “Oh yeah?” he said. “You one of them, are you?”
“What?” said David.
“Copper.”
“Oh.” He smiled nervously. “No, it’s just that … well, this Kerslake bloke used to be a friend of my dad’s.” He told his lie, at which he was now becoming adept.
The barman said, “Your dad was one then, was he?”
“A policeman? No. He was just … a neighbour of Kerslake’s. They used to go out drinking together, playing golf, that sort of thing.”
The barman shrugged dismissively and started to turn away. “Can’t help you, pal. I’ve never heard of the bloke,” he said.
David watched him walk down to the other end of the bar, feeling belittled, dismissed. He closed his hand around the bottle of Beck’s, his thumb creating a channel through the frost of condensation. He took a sip of the beer and got nothing more than a mouthful of bubbles.
“What was your pa’s name?” asked the old man.
David glanced at him. The old man had swivelled on his stool and was now facing him, leaning forward a little, thin legs together, bony knees jutting at a thirty degree angle. He resembled a rather dishevelled leprechaun perched on top of a toadstool. He had spoken, however, not in an Irish accent but in a thick Glaswegian one.
Now that the man was facing him, David observed two things about him which he had not noticed before. One was the startlingly incongruous presence of a large gold loop in the old man’s left ear, and the other was a maroon birthmark which started just above the man’s jawline and covered the left side of his throat, and which, in the dim light of the pub, looked disconcertingly like a splash of blood.
“Burton,” said David, pulling the name from nowhere. “James Burton.”
The old man smiled crookedly and nodded. David couldn’t help thinking that somehow the old man knew he was lying, but was smiling in admiration of the quickness of his response to an unexpected question.
“Burton, eh?” the old man said. “Ah canna say ah knew anyone o’ that name. He was a copper too, ye say?”
“No,” said David, shaking his head. “He was just a friend of Inspector Kerslake’s. A neighbour.”
“Ah well, ah wouldna know him then. Kerslake didna live around these parts, just worked here. He had a nice hoose up Borehamwood way, if ah remember right.”
“Did you know Inspector Kerslake well then?” David asked. He waited patiently while the old man picked up his glass and gulped down the last of his beer.
When he had done, the old man released a gasp of contentment and placed his empty glass with loving care on the bar. “Great drop o’ beer, that is,” he said meaningfully.
David suppressed a sigh. “Can I get you another?”
The old man’s wizened face lit up with surprise and delight. “Ah well noo, that’s verra decent of you, young feller. I’ll hae a wee drop o’ the same in there, if you don’t mind.”
David bought the old man a drink and watched as he sucked noisily at the cloudy liquid. When the old man’s mouth was free again, David prompted, “You were going to tell me about Inspector Kerslake.”
“Name’s Willie,” said the old man, extending a hand. “Willie McQueen.”
David took the hand and shook it. Despite McQueen’s diminutive stature, his hand was larger and chunkier than David’s, the skin rough and calloused. David was surprised at the strength of his handshake.
“David,” he said, and was about to use his proper surname when he remembered to say, “Burton.”
“Pleased to meet you, David.” McQueen winked again, the skin around his eyes crumpling like old brown paper. “You’re not from around these parts, are you?”
“No,” said David, “I’m from Leeds. You don’t sound as though you’re from around these parts either.”
McQueen chuckled. “True enough. Ah’m what you might call a dispossessed Scotsman. From good auld Glasgee, God bless her and all who sail in her.”
“You must have been here a while,” said David. When McQueen frowned enquiringly, he added, “To know Kerslake, I mean.”
“Oh aye. Back after the war, you know, this was where the work was. Or so we all thought anyway.”
“Do you know if Kerslake still lives in … where was it? Borehamwood?” David asked.
McQueen pursed his lips. “Och no. He retired from the force and moved out nearer ti the coast.”
“I don’t suppose you have any idea which coast he moved to?”
“Aye, well, it wasna really the coast. It was just nearer ti the coast. Somewhere outside Ipswich. No far from Felixtowe.”
“Do you know where exactly?” David asked. Though only half-full, the pub now felt very warm. He took a swig of his beer. The cold liquid felt good on his tongue and throat but he winced at the spark of pain it ignited in his temples.
“Ah canna remember exactly,” McQueen said slowly, screwing up his eyes as if gazing into the dim and distant past. “It was just a wee village. Began with an S.”
“S,” said David. He didn’t know enough about the area to even hazard a guess.
The Scotsman gazed up into the murky air as if the answer was there somewhere, waiting to be plucked out. Perhaps it was, for suddenly his face cleared. “Sholten,” he said, then rather spoilt it by adding, “Something like that anyway.”
“Sholten,” David repeated. He had never heard of the place.
“Aye. Something like that.”
David took another swig of Beck’s, but found that he didn’t really want the beer after all, that he was now too eager to check out what the old man had told him. He shrugged himself into his Bogart, grimacing at its clamminess.
McQueen lowered his glass and wiped a hand across his mouth. Sounding genuinely disappointed, he said, “You’re not going already, are you?”
“Sorry, but I’m not actually feeling too well,” David lied. “I think I’ve got a touch of the flu coming on. I’m going to go home to bed.”
McQueen nodded shrewdly. “Oh aye, best thing. You don’t want ti be poorly for Christmas, do you?”
As he said this, he gestured vaguely around him. David looked up and was surprised to see cheap foil lanterns drooping from the ceiling, loops of coloured crepe paper stuck to the wall behind the bar with drawing pins. He hadn’t even noticed the Christmas decorations before, and now that he looked properly he realised they were all around him. Grinning Santas made of thin moulded plastic beamed inappropriately from the toilet doors. A large fringed streamer made of gold foil was redly emblazoned with the words HAPPY CHRISTMAS.
In David’s eyes, instead of cheering the place up, the decorations only served to make it more depressing than it was already. The streamers and lanterns were old and grubby and a bit battered. It made Christmas seem like an obligation to be cheerful rather than a genuine celebration.
He mustered a smile. “No,” he said, “I don’t.” He hesitated only a second before holding out his hand. “Nice to have met you, Mr McQueen.”
“Oh aye,” said McQueen, shaking David’s hand with warmth and vigour. “Likewise.”
