That Summer He Died (34 page)

He didn’t blink.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It was wrong. . . what happened. . . it should never. . .’ His words trailed off, but she knew what he meant.

‘No.’

‘And even though it was an accident,’ he said, ‘it’s still wrong that she’s dead.’

Suzie continued to stare at him. ‘I know.’

‘And. . . well, that’s why I’m not hanging out with Alex and Dan any more. Even though they had nothing to do with it, it just doesn’t feel right. . . that whole fucking scene.’

A lock of Suzie’s hair flopped down and curled across her eyebrow. He controlled the urge to reach out and push it back, to touch her skin. He heard laughter and turned to see the two boys walking their boards over.

‘I’d better get these stashed,’ she said. ‘Simon’s probably ready to go home.’

James stared awkwardly at the strip of sand which separated them. He could feel the moment slipping away.

‘Are you finished teaching for the day?’

‘Yeah, all done.’

Now. Now or never. ‘How about a drink?’ he said, looking up. Her face was neutral. Not pleased, but not horrified either. He pressed on: ‘With me. I mean, do you want to come for a drink with me?’

‘I can’t.’

He’d been half expecting it, and had his reaction taped already for this eventuality. He even managed a smile. ‘Some other time then,’ he said, turning to go.

‘Wait.’

He froze for a second before turning back to face her.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got to do the accounts for Surfers’ Turf tonight. They’re tough enough without adding alcohol to the equation. But afterwards. . . yeah, maybe we could meet.’ The two kids were standing by the door to the Surf School now, watching them intently. One of them giggled, but Suzie ignored him. ‘I should be done by half-eight, and it’s closed Wednesdays, so why don’t you come over then, have a coffee? We can talk.’

His smile was real this time, lasting. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you there.’

James left the beach and joined the procession of tourists tramping back to their B&Bs with their beer coolers and beach balls. He continued up the hill, stopped by the church wall and sat on the grassy verge for a smoke. Already the thrill of riding past here in Alex’s Spitfire seemed distant, disconnected.

He finished his cigarette and turned and looked at the clock on St Donal’s tower. Six-thirty. Two hours to go before he met Suzie. There wasn’t much point in walking back to Alan’s place; he’d hardly have time to rest his legs before it was time to set back out again.

He looked across the undulating roofs of Grancombe. Despite his familiarity with the view, it seemed somehow completely new. It was all down to Alex – the fact that James had pulled the ejector switch, had jettisoned him from his life. Grancombe had always been tied up with Alex in James’s mind, so now that the link had been severed, so too had his link with the town. Alex had been the lens through which he’d previously looked. Alex had interpreted everything he’d seen. Meaning that, with Alex now gone, James might as well have been stepping off the train all over again.

No matter. He got to his feet and set off for the high street. He’d grown, he told himself. He no longer needed people like Alex to introduce him to the world. And Suzie was here, wasn’t she? Which meant this town was still worth sinking himself into, was still worth giving a fresh go. But first he had to stop hiding. He had to prove to himself that this could all still be his.

He reached the Moonraker and went inside. No need to hide any more. Fresh start. If Alex and Dan were in here, so what? He’d get by just fine without them.

As it happened, it was quiet. There was no sign of them. Just the usual group of locals lined up along the bar stools, staring straight ahead.

‘Hello, James,’ Johnno said, moving across to the corner of the bar as James reached it. ‘Boys aren’t here, if it’s them you’re looking for. . .’

‘No. Just a pint, thanks.’

Johnno moved across to the tap. ‘Coming right up.’

‘I still can’t bloody believe it,’ Cliff, a trawler captain, was saying out loud. ‘I mean, we all know he’s a nutter, but not that. Never have had him down for doing that.’

‘They say they got all the evidence they need to put the bastard away for life, way I hear it,’ Sam, his long-time drinking companion, came back. ‘Jesus, you gotta be thick, though, haven’t you? Thinking you can just go selling something like that and no one’s gonna go asking any questions.’

Johnno came back with James’s pint and placed it on a beer mat before him.

James handed him some cash, caught his eye and nodded down the bar.

‘What are they on about?’

Johnno shot him a world-weary glance. ‘Same as everyone’s been on about all afternoon: Arnie Oldfield.’

James sucked the froth off the top of his pint and wiped the foam moustache from his upper lip. ‘Why, what’s he done?’

‘Jesus, James, I know you haven’t been out much lately, but where’ve you been? Doing an ostrich down the beach? Burying your head in the sand? I thought everyone in the whole bloody town knew by now.’

James just shrugged. ‘So, you going to tell me or what?’

‘Murphy’s arrested him.’

James was iced. ‘For what happened to that girl on Eagle’s Point?’

Johnno glanced uneasily down the bar. His own son’s temporary incarceration and questioning by Murphy, just like James’s, was obviously public knowledge, which he didn’t want raked up again.

‘No,’ he mumbled to James, ‘nothing to do with that. It’s Dawes. They’ve arrested Arnie in connection with Jack Dawes’s murder.’

‘What?’

Not in a million years would James ever have guessed that.

According to Johnno, Arnie Oldfield had been arrested in Andersford the day before and charged just after lunch today. Andrew Rawlings, one of Murphy’s boys, had been into the Moonraker earlier, and had let slip over a couple of pints the details of what had happened. It would make no difference in the long run. The press were already on to it. Oldfield’s photograph would be plastered across millions of papers and computer screens the following morning. A nation’s eyes would focus on Grancombe through the lens of television cameras once again.

What had gone down was this: Arnie Oldfield had caught the bus over to Andersford the previous day. This was a market town around forty miles away, renowned throughout the county as a thriving arts and antiques centre. He’d gone into one of the auction houses carrying a thin rectangular parcel under his arm and demanded to see an art specialist. The receptionist had left him waiting for a while, her suspicions already raised, doubting that such an uncultured scruff could have anything of interest in his possession. But Arnie had waited, sat there silently, staring at her, and once it had become apparent that he really wasn’t going to give up and go and bother someone else, she’d tried fobbing him off with an office junior. This hadn’t worked either and so she’d succumbed to his persistence and persuaded the expert to give him five minutes of her time.

Arnie had been shown through to the expert’s office. Without being asked or bothering to introduce himself, he had approached her desk and carefully placed his parcel down. He’d then pulled a penknife from his pocket and had cut the red string that bound the parcel, ripping its brown paper free.

And at that precise moment, Arnie Oldfield’s life had taken a decided downturn.

‘Couldn’t have gone to a worse place, see,’ Johnno explained. ‘This expert woman, she was a friend of Jack Dawes. Real fan by all accounts. It was her who was arranging the show of his work up in London. Recognised the brush strokes and that straight away. Didn’t even need to see his initials down the bottom.’

The painting was of the back of a nude woman, crouched in the corner of a room, her face totally obscured by the fall of her dark hair. The expert had looked from this to Arnie and back again. Eventually she’d asked him if he knew who it was by, what it was worth. He’d told her outright: Jack Dawes, deceased; probably worth a fortune now. She’d asked him where he’d got it, and he’d told her that he’d been given it by the artist. He’d said he wanted cash for it. There and then. No receipts. Simple transaction. If she gave him the money, he’d give her the painting, and then he’d walk away.

‘That’s what he was on about up at Eagle’s Point,’ James interrupted.

Johnno looked confused. ‘Eh?’

‘Said he wasn’t going to have to worry about money any more. He was going to be rich.’

‘Yeah, well, he couldn’t have been more wrong if he’d tried, could he?’

The expert had verbally agreed to what Arnie had said, and suggested a ridiculously high price which all but had him salivating. She’d fixed him up with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand, and then excused herself from the room on the pretext of going to the bank to withdraw the cash. When the door to the office had opened twenty minutes later and Arnie had turned to welcome his fortune-bearer’s return, the coffee cup had fallen from his hand and rolled across the antiquated carpet between his feet. A uniformed arm had descended on his shoulder to discourage him from attempting to run.

He’d been nicked. Cold.

‘Trouble with being thick, that,’ Johnno reflected. ‘No foresight. Should’ve seen it coming. Same with the whole plan. Didn’t stand a chance of getting away with it in the first place, stupid bastard. Wasn’t for what he’d done to Jack, I’d even pity him. As it is, I hope they bring back the death penalty, string the bastard up.’

Arnie had protested his innocence there and then and, by all accounts, had stuck to this story throughout the long hours of interrogation that followed. His story was weak, though. The police weren’t convinced.

‘Said Dawes had given him the painting before he’d been killed,’ Johnno said with a sad expression and a shake of his head. ‘But then the cops pressured him and tricked him out of saying that, and instead he broke down and told them he’d found it. Just lying there next to a tree. Said he’d been walking back from working on Jack’s garden. Nearly trod on it. All tightly wrapped up. Couldn’t believe his luck.’

Johnno’s eyes locked with James’s. ‘He couldn’t believe his luck,’ he scoffed. ‘Problem was, neither could the police!’

The way they saw it, Arnie’s story had fallen down on so many counts that it was practically black and blue. For a start, there was his lie about the painting having been a gift. Then there was his claim that he’d been working in Dawes’s garden when he’d found it. Dawes had already been dead a week on the day Arnie claimed he’d stumbled across the painting. So what had he been doing there? He’d said Jack had always treated him well and that was his small way of repaying him for his kindness – keeping the garden the way Jack would have wanted it. Fine. Fine and honourable. The cliché-ed act of a faithful retainer.

Only it hadn’t fooled anyone for a second. Consistency. That’s where Arnie’s story had first collapsed. So he’d respected Jack and continuing to work the garden had been his way of mourning? So how come, when he’d stumbled across the painting of the nude in the woods (a miracle not even his fertile imagination had been able to explain), he hadn’t decided to hand it in to the police? How come he’d decided instead to steal it and try and sell it? Money, he’d come back. Money. He’d needed money. Motive, they’d come back at him. Motive. He’d just handed them one on a plate.

James was still reeling from the news. ‘You don’t reckon he killed Dawes, though, do you?’ he finally said.

‘Don’t matter what I believe. Just the police and judge and jury. Only opinions worth a damn. If it gets that far, that is. . .’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Andrew Rawlings says they’ve got their suspicions and that. The assault up on Eagle’s Point two years back. Not like Arnie’s not capable of doing something like that. But suspicions ain’t worth a damn ’less he admits to it. They can bang him up for theft easy enough. After all, he had the keys to Dawes’s place and he had the motive, eh? But not murder, I don’t reckon. Not without any proper proof.’

‘Bad business,’ James commented, wondering if word had already reached Alan about this.

‘The press will have a field day. But it’ll be over soon. That’s the main thing. Way I see it, it’s better to get the bad publicity in at the end of the season, but have the whole matter cleared up for the next. Unsolved murders never do no one or nowhere no good. Business has been bloody terrible since you kids found Jack up there in the woods.’ Johnno lowered his voice. ‘Some people – and I’m not mentioning no names – been saying it might’ve been better you never found him at all. Tourists don’t like that kind of thing. No one does. But ’specially tourists. Not gonna go bringing your kids down here next year, you think they’re gonna get their hands cut off. Aye,’ he reflected, ‘sooner the slate’s wiped clean on Jack’s behalf, the better for everyone concerned.’

James stayed for another couple of drinks in the Moonraker. Arnie Oldfield remained the topic of conversation as other customers arrived and slid into the debate. James briefly considered phoning Alan. Maybe this was the news that would jolt him out of his self-imposed isolation and set his spirit free. But halfway to dialling the number on his mobile, James remembered that Alan’s phone had been cut off. Plus, what did it really matter? His uncle was probably too far gone now to give a damn. James returned to his drink and, eventually, the hand of the clock above the bar wound down towards half-eight. He finished his pint.

‘I’ll see you around,’ he told Johnno.

‘Aye,’ the landlord said, reaching over and taking the empty glass, ‘see you soon, son. And you see that boy of mine, tell him to get his arse back here. Meant to be helping out this afternoon and he ain’t shown his face all day.’

I don’t give a damn about your son, James thought as he pushed through the door on to the street. Just your daughter. Just the beautiful woman I’m on my way to meet.

*

As he walked up over Eagle’s Point and descended the steps the other side which led to South Beach, James’s feelings towards both siblings intensified.

Johnno had been right: the season was drawing to a close. And when it finally did end, James’s time here would end with it, fade away like a sunset. Not long now and he’d be climbing on to the train and heading back to London, and then from London on to Edinburgh. And even if he did come back – like he wanted to, so long as Suzie wanted him to, so long as Alan let him – it wouldn’t be for months.