Death By Misadventure Part 2
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It doesn't take a mathematician with the perspicacity of a Pascal to
postulate that Neptune's Triangle has four sides. How the misnomer
originated is a topic the residents believe is best left for students of
local history to ponder; the only thing most of them know - or indeed care
about - is that as the bronze deity surveys his watery realm from the
middle of an open space less than seventy yards across at its widest
point, too small for the council to dignify it with an official title, the
name has stuck.
Few of those fortunate enough to own one of the imposing four-storey
houses on Princess Terrace or the more modest dwellings on Redheugh Close,
which face what is in effect a miniature park from the north and west
respectively, would argue that the headland could possibly offer a more
pleasant setting. Here at its south-eastern extremity is commanded an
unrivalled view of Teeswater Bay, best enjoyed on a bright afternoon when
the Cleveland Hills, marching to meet the sea in a sequence of majestic
cliffs, are often elucidated in breathtaking detail. The less
aesthetically minded may be more appreciative of the man-made hillock
known as Battery Point, home to the Heugh lighthouse and the cenotaph
honouring amongst others the first casualties to fall on British soil
during the Great War, which affords shelter from the fierce gales that
lash this exposed section of the Durham coast even in high summer. But for
the last three years it has been the exquisite sunken garden at the fully
restored statue's feet that by common agreement has made the Triangle such
a desirable place to live.
"This is all very quaint," smiles Kerrie as she unwittingly parks the
Beetle in the very spot Arthur Brookbank's dilapidated old Wolseley 1500
called home until the death of its owner from a sudden stroke at the
tragically early age of forty-eight.
"Isn't it just," I murmur, taking care to avoid being overheard this time.
I tend to avoid my old stamping ground if I can. Although it's beyond
dispute that such features as the japanned wrought-iron railings and trim
hawthorn hedges have enhanced the environment tremendously, this is no
longer the place where I spent the first eighteen years of my life. More
than that, I feel both cheated and insulted. If I didn't know better I
could quite easily be persuaded that the council had waited for me to move
away before releasing the funds to spruce the area up.
I follow Kerrie along Redheugh Close to the sea wall, which overlooks a
foreshore of boulders and rock pools where on a clearer day than this
gulls would be wheeling and diving in search of tasty morsels left behind
by the retreating tide. To our right stands the house Helen Sutton
purchased after she took up her position at Hart Street; like the rest of
the terrace its front door opens directly onto the pavement, yet the
property is set apart by the double-glazed windows with their genuine
hardwood surrounds, a stuccoed exterior of a shade somewhere between
mustard and peach, and the neat lines of Flemish tiles adorning the roof.
Yet for all the improvements that appear to have been made, it's not the
kind of abode where anyone would expect to find a relatively young woman
whose assets would eventually realise more than half a million pounds.
A paved walkway leads us around the side of the house to Albion Crescent.
Perhaps thirty feet below, the Heugh breakwater extends into the mist like
a causeway to some ghostly otherworld, an impression reinforced by the
low, funereal boom of the foghorn. Further on languish the wrack-covered
remains of the outdoor swimming baths, destroyed in a storm a quarter of a
century ago, and a promenade whose only amenities are an empty children's
paddling pool and a crazy golf course presided over by a hut so decrepit
its last coat of paint was probably applied by a man who'd turned up for
work wearing a doublet and hose.
We pause at the top of a flight of steps that seem to have been cemented
onto the vertical concrete as a last-minute addition. On the opposite side
of the road stands the Kirkham public house, a prominent TO LET sign
fastened to the wall above the mock-Grecian portico. Whitewash has been
brushed over the windows, whilst the picnic tables and benches set out on
the patio are speckled with bird droppings.
Another Northcroft success story. My father's coffin must be corkscrewing
its way to the centre of the earth.
"So this is where it all happened?" asks Kerrie, placing far more trust in
the railings she's resting against than I'm prepared to.
"So they say. Apparently Carol ran into the pub - it hadn't closed down
then, of course - at about a quarter to eight with blood pouring from her
forehead, screaming for them to call 999 'cause her husband had fallen in
the sea. Then she passed out."
"And when she came round she couldn't remember anything?"
"If you want my opinion she's lucky to have survived at all. She had to
have followed Bob onto the breakwater, or else she couldn't have seen what
went on. When the tide's in and the wind's coming straight from the east
just going down there's as good a method of committing suicide as I can
think of."
"Could that be what he did?"
"He phoned his son-in-law earlier in the weekend, said he'd talked the
bank into lending him the money to buy his own fishing boat. The guy was
over the moon."
Kerrie shakes her head.
"It doesn't make sense. He must've known how dangerous the conditions
were. Why would he risk his life like that? I don't understand."
"You're not the only one."
I head across the road at an angle, aiming for number 16. In daylight it
looks just as forbidding as it did last night. Why the Hodgsons wanted to
swap that nice little house I remember them having on Lumley Square for a
hulking pile like this defies logic.
I open the gate and walk up the steps to the front door. Once again
there's no reply to my knock. I bend down to squint through the letter
box. Sure enough, the note I addressed to Carol Vasey is on the mat where
I dropped it.
"I shouldn't bother, sweetheart," I hear Kerrie call from the gate. "No
one's lived here for months."
I turn towards her, puzzled.
"Months? How d'you work that out? Sylv said she only got married about six
weeks ago, remember?"
"Think about it. Every morning when she pulled back the curtains, the
first thing she'd see was the place where she lost her husband. No wonder
she wanted to leave."
"It's not up for sale..."
"I don't know, perhaps she wants to divide it into flats."
We walk back to Redheugh Close in silence. The feeling that something
isn't quite right is impossible to escape.
Because Helen Sutton died the same night as Bob Hodgson, that's why.
If only I could wrap my head around the implications of that one simple
sentence.
At the corner we're met by a wiry, beak-nosed woman in her sixties, wiping
her hands on the apron she wears over a pinafore dress florid enough to
qualify for a Britain In Bloom award.
"It's Ruth Pattison, isn' it? I thought it was you when I seen the two o'
yers go past earlier on. I said to meself I know that lass. Then I
remembered Doreen Garbutt tellin' us yer was back in the town workin' at
Norah's an' yer'd gone ginger like yer sister did. Yer don't recognise us,
do yer? Elsie Harbron. Yer went to school with our Jim's youngest, Paula."
She looks at Kerrie. "Who's this, one o' yer mates from down south?"
I'm not sure which depresses me more, the fact that my presence in the
town appears to be common knowledge or realising that I'm now officially a
redhead.
"Her name's Kerrieanne Latimer. She's staying at the Gladstone while--"
"I'll come straight to the point, Mrs Harbron," interjects Kerrie. "Your
neighbour Miss Sutton left a considerable sum of money to my father, who
passed on about seven months ago. He was called William O'Rourke, although
most people knew him as Billy. Did Helen ever mention him to you?"
Elsie's expression hardens.
"If 'e 'ad owt to do with 'er, yer better off lettin' sleepin' dogs lie,
that's what I reckon. There's things went on in that 'ouse...naw, yer'll
not 'ear about 'em from me. Not because o' what they said, mind. They
don't frighten Elsie Harbron, I don't care 'ow many blokes in suits they
send round."
Kerrie and I swap sidelong glances.
"What are you talking about?" she asks Elsie. "Has someone threatened
you?"
"They tried. Told 'us if the bobbies knocked on the door I should just say
I never seen or 'eard nowt that night 'cause I was in watchin' the telly
with the sound turned up - if I knew what was good for 'us, they said."
"Was this the night Helen died?" I put in.
"And poor Bob Hodgson, God rest 'is soul. He might 'ave mercy on 'ers too,
I mean when all's said an' done she wasn' such a bad sort." Elsie gestures
towards the statue. "Did yers know she paid for that lot out 'er own
pocket? Got a surveyor in an' everything. Come all the way from London.
Aye, I know it was Bob that badgered the rest o' them big fat lazy idle
beggars down the Borough Hall to give 'er plannin' permission, but I'm
tellin' yer, without the dosh Helen stumped up they wouldn've planted a
single flower. She wanted that kept quiet, o' course. Said there was
enough nosy parkers pryin' into 'er doin's as it was."
I rein in my frustration. This is going nowhere faster than a play co-
written by Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter.
"Could those men have had anything to do with the French girl?" wonders
Kerrie.
Elsie furrows her brows, then beckons us closer.
"Wouldn' surprise me. Nasty piece o' work, she was. Helen never made a
better choice in 'er life than when she told that 'un to sling 'er 'ook. I
remember it like it was the other day. I was doin' me step when I 'eard
the door open an' out the pair o' them came. Went at it like 'ammer an'
tongs they did, an' the language they were usin'...then Helen said summat
to 'er, must've been in French 'cause I never understood a word of it, and
yer know what, the frog went down like a sack o' taties. Aye, true as I'm
standin' 'ere now. I thought for a minute Helen 'ad stabbed 'er with a
knife. Well, she crawled into that flash car of 'ers on 'er 'ands and
knees, then drove off like she was Stirlin' Moss. That was the last we
ever seen of 'er, an' good riddance too if y'ask me."
Elsie refuses to tell us more, and shuffles back to number 5 with the
warning that 'nowt good ever come from rakin' up the past'.
Kerrie lets out a loud sigh.
"What d'you make of that, sweetheart?"
"I don't know...but I wouldn't mind a word or two with Mademoiselle
Malraux."
"My thoughts exactly."
I turn away, assuming that this part of our inquiry is at an end. Kerrie,
however, has other ideas. Less than a minute later we're in the back
street, trying the latch on the tall wooden gate set in the stout
Victorian brickwork. As I expected it's bolted shut, but my companion's
eyes have already picked out the teenage boy kicking a football back and
forth against the wall some fifty yards away.
"That's a stroke of luck," she says. "Come on, we'll get him to climb over
and let us in."
"How are we going to do that?"
She unzips her windcheater, then does the same to my cagoule.
"Shouldn't be too difficult for a couple of busty babes like us."
Which is how we find ourselves in a yard that has been transformed into a
private xeriscape of trellised walls and terracotta tiles edged with dwarf
conifers and other assorted shrubs, all dominated by an ornate stone
fountain in the shape of a wood nymph I estimate must have added a few
hundred to the house's asking price on its own. Wherever we look, we find
evidence that Helen spared no expense in making her home as comfortable as
was humanly possible. What was once an outside lavatory now houses a
state-of-the-art combination boiler. An extension has been built that
could act either as a laundry room or a small conservatory. Visible
through the kitchen window are the stainless steel sink and work surfaces
that glisten in spite of the ever-worsening light. That the house remains
unsold so long after its owner gave up the ghost says more about
Northcroft's economic plight than a wad of government statistics.
Kerrie pushes at the door; to her delight it's unlocked. Smirking like a
naughty schoolgirl sneaking into the staff room to put a spider in her
maths teacher's lunch box, she seizes my wrist and drags me inside.
Although only the fixtures and fittings remain, the glass-panelled
interior doors, Artexed ceilings, sumptuous deep-pile carpets, burnished
mahogany shelves and brass fin de si?cle lampshades all bear eloquent
witness to the fact that here was a woman who valued fine craftsmanship
over all other considerations. The building has been completely re-wired,
and the lack of mildew or condensation suggests the existence of a number
of damp courses.
The first clue that not everything is as it should be comes when the door
to one of the upstairs rooms declines to move more than an inch at a time.
I heave for all I'm worth, but I'm a girl now and my strength isn't what
it was; in the end all I can do is add my weight to Kerrie's until we
finally shift the object on the other side far enough for us to squeeze
through.
"Someone didn't want to be disturbed," she observes, frowning at the
sandbags stuffed into the removal crate blocking the way in.
"It was probably kids," I suggest.
"You think so? In that case they were a lot tidier than mine. I can't see
any cigarette ends or sweet wrappers lying about." She steps across to the
window and runs a finger along the sill. "Not much dust. That means
whoever it was, they were here fairly recently."
I open the louvered wall closet. At the bottom resides a casket the size
of a small picnic hamper. Fashioned from sandalwood or some similar
material, the lacquered surface is decorated with swirling arabesque
calligraphy inlaid in gold.
"If they were burglars then they missed this," I remark.
"Sweetheart, it's absolutely gorgeous!" gushes Kerrie as I drag it into
the centre of the floor and my spine makes the discovery that it's a lot
heavier than it looks. "My friend Cathryn simply adores anything like
this. When I finally get round to meeting Mrs Vasey I must ask her if I
can take this back with me."
"Why bother? She obviously doesn't know it's here, or why would she leave
it for any Tom, Dick or Harry to walk away with? I'm no Arthur Negus, but
even I can tell it's worth a penny or two."
"Hmm...you may be right. We'll have a look inside, then you can help me
carry it down to the car. On second thoughts, it might be safer in my
room. You don't mind, do you sweetheart?"
Of course I don't. What's a slipped disc compared to her mate's soft spot
for exotic artefacts? I hope for her sake there hasn't been a problem with
the solicitor's cheque clearing, because I have no intention of paying the
chiropractor's bill myself.
Kerrie kneels to unfasten the metal clasp holding down the casket's lid. I
sit beside her, the more adventurous part of me hoping we find something
more interesting than sacks full of sand.
It isn't disappointed.
The first item she lifts out I take to be a lump of black cloth, but is in
fact a stack of neatly folded jackets and dresses. She picks up one of the
latter and holds the material to her cheek.
"Mmm...like velvet, but softer," she says, passing it across.
I hold the dress in front of me. It's sleeveless, with a demure lace
collar and a diaphanous bodice that has built-in support; the skirt flares
out from a narrow waist to a hem that on someone my height would struggle
to cover the knees. I have no way of telling where the garment was made,
since the label at the top of the zip looks to have been cut or torn off.
There are five others, all identical in design to the first. Kerrie stares
at them for a little while, then stands and pulls me to my feet.
"Thirty-eight trumps twenty-three," she grins, slinking behind me to slide
the cagoule from my shoulders.
"You're joking!" I laugh, but this isn't a woman accustomed to taking no
for an answer.
"It's your fault for being so young. Come on, you know you're dying to."
In fact I'd rather sit through a dozen episodes of Crossroads with my
eyelids stapled open, but I can't be bothered to waste time arguing with
her. And at least I have no qualms about stripping off in front of another
woman; they disappeared that first Sunday in Belvedere House, when Suki
insisted I swap my T-shirt and jeans for a pair of tights and one of Tim's
cricket jumpers so I could get used to moving about with my legs on
display.
A few moments later I'm flicking my hair off my shoulders as the material
settles and I realise not only that the gauze covering my breasts is so
thin it's practically invisible, the support makes no attempt at all to
hide my nipples.
"Doesn't leave much to the imagination," I chuckle as Kerrie studies the
emblem, shaped like a Chinese pictogram, sewn in gold thread onto the
collar. "Talk about showing all points north!"
She shrugs her shoulders.
"They were lesbians. What did you expect, dungarees and hobnail boots?"
I start to redden, and not only because I almost let my cover slip. I'd
imagined that living on the south coast for nearly four and a half years
had imbued me with a more cosmopolitan attitude than those who stayed
behind in Northcroft. My comment gave the lie to that delusion. To Kerrie
I'm just another hidebound headlander, with no more sophistication than a
jam sandwich.
But my blushes are spared by the rest of the casket's contents.
Three small phials of black ink. A tube filled with a clear resin. A jar
of what seems to be moisturising cream. A dozen or more long strings of
heavy black beads. A bag tied with knotted twine that spills out
bracelets, necklaces, and rings mounted with sparkling black jewels, as
well as scores of loose gemstones of differing sizes, all of them black
and all backed with felt, as if they're meant to be attached to something.
Most bizarre of the lot, an implement that wouldn't have looked out of
place in a tattooist's parlour.
Kerrie pulls the stopper from one of the bottles. To the underside is
affixed a delicate cosmetic brush. She sniffs it, her head recoiling.
"This is nail varnish!" she exclaims. "Did Helen ever say she worked as a
make-up artist, something along those lines?"
"Not to my knowledge. Why?"
"Because what we've got here could easily be a collection of props left
over from a third-rate horror film. All that's missing is a set of fangs."
I lean forward and pick up the jar containing the thick white gel. On the
side I can see a name, Niculescu, and an address, though efforts have been
made to scratch out the latter.
"You know something, you might not be that far off the mark. I can't quite
read the name of the town, but I'd hazard a guess it's in Romania."
"Really? Why d'you say that?"
Me and my big mouth again. How many more times...?
I have to think fast. Admitting that I remember England's 1-0 victory over
that country in the group stage of the 1970 World Cup, when nearly half
the opponents' surnames ended with the element -escu, simply won't do.
"I, uh...I once went out with a guy whose father was born in Romania.
Before I met Tim, obviously. Stefan, he was called. Stefan, uh...Stefan
Stefanescu. It means 'Stephen, son of Stephen'. Or something like that."
Go on, Rich. Dig away. "I said to him that's not very original, but
apparently it's fairly widespread in their part of Europe."
Much to my relief, Kerrie appears happy to accept this rubbish as gospel.
Maybe I'm better at telling lies than I give myself credit for.
Or she wasn't paying that much attention.
Her hand has found what is evidently the casket's false bottom. She slides
it out, revealing a large dog-eared notebook bearing a Woolworth's
trademark. As she opens it, I see her grope inside her bag for her
glasses. A moment later her eyes light up behind them.
"Come and look at this, sweetheart!" she cries. "I think we've hit the
jackpot!"
Glued to the first page is a Xeroxed copy of a newspaper report dated
February 23rd 1946. It carries the story of a collision between the
Sheffield Victoria to Marylebone express and a goods train at Grendon
Underwood junction in Buckinghamshire. Among the eight passengers to lose
their lives were Frank Sutton, a civil servant from Loughborough, and his
wife Marjorie. Their eleven year old daughter Helen escaped with cuts and
bruises.
"She was an orphan, then," I say, feeling fairly safe in stating the
obvious.
"Mmm...and Loughborough's only about twelve miles from Leicester, which is
one of the places we lived after dad brought us across the water in '47.
I'll have to check with my sisters, but volunteering to help disadvantaged
children is just the sort of thing I'd expect him to have done."
"Still, for Helen to have remembered his kindness after so many years..."
"It's not very likely, I know. But at least it'll give Shannon and Clare
something to chew on. Now, I wonder what other goodies she's left us?"
Overleaf we find a teaching certificate awarded in the summer of 1958 by
Loughborough College of Physical Education, and after that another press
clipping naming Helen as one of a team of walkers who raised money for
charity by finishing the journey from Land's End to John o'Groats.
Then nothing - until the three photographs right at the end of the book.
The first features four smiling girls in their late teens or very early
twenties, dressed in hiking gear and standing against a spectacular
backdrop of upland meadows and forested mountains. At the foot of the
page, in a neat if slightly immature feminine hand, has been added a
caption.
Outside Vatra Bucovinei, 31/7/64
"July 1964..." I mutter. "That can't have been very long before Helen
moved here. What d'you reckon, a last holiday abroad before she started
work in the frozen north?"
"Assuming it was Helen who took the picture," Kerrie cautions me.
"No, not a holiday. She was twenty-nine that year, and those girls are all
a lot younger. Some sort of outward bound course, maybe? But it definitely
wasn't in Romania. For a start, it's almost impossible to get a visa
unless you've got family there or you're invited as part of a delegation.
And I'm fairly sure they don't let you wander around the countryside
taking snapshots."
I turn the page, and find four names and addresses. Presumably they belong
to the young women in the photograph.
Sarah-Jane Collingwood
Bywell Lodge, Bywell nr Hexham
Susan Dwyer
33 Chalice Lane, Glastonbury
Lynne Macreadie
19 Kilbirnie Road, Dunoon
Sonia Kessell
Aptmnt 304, Machtenslaan 134, Molenbeek, Brussels
"Why d'you think the first one's been crossed out?" asks Kerrie.
"I've no idea. It was fifteen years ago. Anything could've happened."
The next image contains more thick foliage, but this time it's outdone by
the magnificent gilded dome and four tall minarets rearing into the
cerulean sky. The date below is given as August 1st.
"'The moschee at Dr?goiasa'," Kerrie reads out. "That must be the local
word for a mosque."
"It's not just a mosque, though. Can you see all those other buildings
peeping from behind the trees?"
"So where on earth were they?"
"Well, it's got to be within a day's walk of that other place. As for
which country, I honestly couldn't say. It might be Turkey, I suppose..."
The final photograph has us turning to each other, dumbstruck.
A young woman sits in a high-walled courtyard where fountains play amid
columns and recesses embellished with the vibrant abstract patterns
characteristic of Islamic architecture at its most splendid.
But this is no follower of the Prophet. Were she to be seen in any public
place from Damascus to Djakarta, stoning or an even worse fate would
undoubtedly await her.
She is completely bald, with what looks to be a line of black gemstones
going back from the top of her forehead along her scalp to the crown and
possibly beyond. A dozen or so smaller stones are set in each of her
brows. There is an oriental slant to her heavily painted eyes; at their
corners are etched a series of tiny black dots forming patterns strikingly
similar to the pictogram on my jacket's lapel. Her lips are black too,
matching the lacquer coating the beringed fingers and thumbs interlaced in
her lap.
And her dress is indistinguishable from the one I'm still wearing.
I point to the caption.
"I'm guessing Sorina's her name. But what the hell is a 'kuzkardesh
gara'?"
"I don't know, sweetheart," replies Kerrie, standing up. She lights a
cigarette, then opens the window to let out the smoke. "But it seems to me
that what we've stumbled on is a kit to turn somebody into one."
"Don't be ridiculous," I laugh. "It's a costume. It must be."
"It's not. I can tell."
"How?"
"Look at her face, Ruth. That's a fanatic if ever I saw one."
She might have a point. Sorina's lips are curled in the self-satisfied
smile of one whose faith is absolute and unwavering. Not only that, but
the resolution is good enough for me to see several large freckles on her
shaven scalp. No actress would say goodbye to her hair for the sake of a
low-budget vampire movie.
Kerrie starts rubbing her chin.
"You know something, I think we've been barking up the wrong tree. Pass me
that jar, would you?" She scoops out a dollop of the viscous white cream
with her finger and holds it to her nose. "Helen didn't bring this back
with her, at least not from that trip. This stuff isn't fifteen years old.
It would have separated out by now, gone all brittle and lost its aroma."
"What are you getting at?"
She asks me to hand her the notebook. Her eyes narrow as she turns to the
page with the four names and addresses.
"I've heard of Hexham. It's not that far from here, is it?"
"Fifty miles, give or take..."
"Then that's where we're going next. I think Helen was in charge of those
girls. Something happened out there, and she felt responsible. These
things were sent to her, maybe not long before she died, as a reminder
that the incident hadn't been forgotten."
"You're talking about blackmail?"
"Remember the men who threatened Mrs Harbron?"
"Yes, but--"
"We need to speak with someone who knows the Collingwood family. Wherever
Sarah-Jane went that summer, I don't think she came back."
As we begin tidying up, I glance once again at the portrait of the
kuzkardesh gara. What message had she heard, that it persuaded her to
undergo such a radical transformation?
Then I remember the incident that took place outside Hayden Hall five
months ago, when I pulled off Suki Tatsukichi's wig and saw the scars
defacing her scalp.
That is a story I shall never tell.
Were you there too, Suki? Did you become one of those women? How recently
did you leave them, that your hair had only just begun growing back last
November?
Around the time that Helen Sutton received the casket, maybe?
A few weeks before she died?
Farewell, my love. You died to save the women of the whole world.
Suddenly I'm shivering, and not because of the cold air coming through the
window.
Gert
- 25.08.2020
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