Cold to the Touch (17 page)

Sarah went to fetch the vicar. Mrs Hurly would need him now.

P
C Chapman was never going to eat meat again. He was remembering the sausages he had eaten from here, wondering what they were made of, what they had touched before he’d eaten them, greedily, with fried eggs and chips while telling his wife about a man and his dog. There had never been a corpse like this, because he felt he might have eaten part of her and because of the colours of her, blue nail varnish, black hair, bloodless, inhuman and still a woman who shamed him with her dead nakedness and left him standing in front of a crowd, wiping vomit from his chin, looking down at his shoes, remembering what he had said when he’d seen her hanging, what he had done. He had walked towards that vision, that corpse. ‘Are you in?’ he had said. ‘Are you in?’

He ignored the growing crowd and sat in the car to radio in all services, to say no, it was not a practical joke. Doctor, ambulance, forensics, Health and Safety – it’s a meat shop, right? He could feel bile in his throat. A face staring at him through the window made him angrier still. He slammed his way out of the car, got out the incident-scene tape and began to cordon off the area, ignoring everyone and refusing questions. ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Why don’t you fuck off?’, kicking a dog that came to sniff at his heels. The pool of vomit
remained as a recrimination containing evidence only of breakfast. He went back into the shop for sawdust, remembered the training that never prepared anyone for reality. Bugger contaminating the crime scene, if that’s what it was; it was contaminated already. The whole bloody place had the plague.

Once back inside, PC Chapman was aware of a greater dereliction of duty, because others had got inside to further disturb the sawdust on the floor. There was a red-haired woman, standing quietly next to Sam Brady, talking softly, and alongside a bloke in a dog collar, wringing his hands, for fuck’s sake. The door of the chiller was closed. Sam Brady turned bloodshot eyes upon him, raised his hands in despair.

‘I had to shut her in,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t stop.’

‘For Christ’s sake.’

PC Chapman tugged at the handle on the door and yanked it open.

Inside, the old woman stood, embracing the corpse by the waist, dragging it down with her own weight. That was as far as she could reach. He could swear the painted toes of the thing were now curled. The old lady was shivering and crying. He looked up to see if the hook still held.

It did.

This time he fainted.

A thoroughly contaminated crime scene. Everyone had laid hands on that body, even the red-headed woman who detached the old woman from it. Mrs Celia Hurly shrank from any contact with a man, but submitted to the embrace of a small, slender female half her size.

C
elia Hurly was back in her white-painted room with the endless view of the sea and the sky. She was very cold, but
snuggled in beneath an eiderdown in a white cotton nightdress. Her arms were free, and lay by her sides. The only colour in the room was the red hair of the person who sat on one side of the bed and the hideous shirt of the man on the other. Celia was responding to orders, dictating something, and the red-haired one was writing it down. She had the dim sensation that the people at her bedside were arguing, whilst she remained the centre of attention. One of them was cruel and one of them was kind: they had different agendas and that did not matter much. Celia felt as if she was swimming and talking at the same time. When she had come here first, still half a girl herself, she had loved paddling in the cold sea in summer. Outside, the sky was blacker than black.

Words came back. Write it all down in your own words, Celia, love. Write your own statement. Makes it easier in the long run, and I need to know.

What do you want to know?

Facts. If we write them down now, we can keep the police away from you. Let you tell things in your own words.

‘How did he die?’

Away from home. He died when he was deep-sea fishing in South Africa, he went every year. A storm, an accident, something. They sent back his ashes to be buried in the graveyard here. Jessica was fourteen.

‘Enough,’ another voice said. ‘Enough.’

Celia felt sleepy.

The second voice asked another question. ‘Is that when Jessica started to go wild?’

She was always wild. Wilful. She would never believe he was dead. She thought he had gone because of her. Then she blamed the boats, because he loved the boats. She was always trying to burn her boats. Can I have some water?

‘Yes, whatever you want. When did she finally leave?’

She left to go to college, but she came back most weeks to make more mayhem. I got her counselling, she screwed that up, big time, everything. Then she got angry with everyone. She set fire to the boats. Three years ago. I haven’t seen her since.

She kept her lovely hair, didn’t she? Does your hair keep on growing after you’re dead?

‘There, there, you can sleep now.’

You’re the one who kicked me. Why are you holding my hand? Don’t go away. Don’t go away. I sent her away, God help me.

Jeremy did it, you know. I told THEM that. Jeremy gave her nits. Jeremy always wanted what she had. Only Jeremy could do this. He knows I hate him. He reminds me of my failure.

‘D
on’t you think this was very cruel?’ Andrew Sullivan said, looking down at the sleeping figure in the all-white room.

‘Necessary.’

He regarded Sarah with something like distaste.

‘You’re such a cold fish, and yet you seem so warm. You’re cold and calculating and manipulative.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Why did you do this?’ he asked angrily. ‘Why did you volunteer to take her home and put her to bed, and hold her hand and then cross-examine her?’

Sarah ushered Andrew out of the room and downstairs. He spoke in stage whispers that sounded loud. It was a small and Spartan house, a strange place for the once lady of the manor to live. They moved into the book-lined living
room flanking the front door. The wind was up again, disturbing the plush red velvet curtain, drawn half across the door, which moved slightly despite its own weight. An emphatically unmodernised house, low on comfort, albeit beautifully placed for a view of the sea, but a bolt-hole rather than a home and not a place to live alone.

‘Why?’ he asked, adoring Sarah and almost disliking her at the same time. She was so at home in here, so much at home everywhere; she knew no barriers. She was moving from the book-filled room to the kitchen at the back, then back again after making more of the endless tea they had drunk, as if it were her own house and she had been here before. It seemed grossly impertinent to him and he was wishing he had not been included. There was food in the fridge, mainly meat, which neither of them wanted.

‘I didn’t see anyone else volunteering to take Mrs Hurly home,’ Sarah said. ‘Or wait with her, or get her to take the tranquillisers the doctor gave her. Or sit with her, and stay with her. I merely wished to be useful. I’m happy to stay the night. I know you don’t want to.’

Andrew shivered. She had nerves of steel.

‘But to question her like that, when she’s full of brandy and valium, wasn’t that cruel?’

‘Precisely the right moment to do it. I meant it when I said it would save time. She’ll be questioned by the police tomorrow or the next day. If there’s something to present to them in a statement form, however rudimentary, it’ll make it easier. Besides, she can hardly suffer more at the moment. It’ll be far worse tomorrow, or the next day, and all the other days to follow. She’ll start lying again. I wanted to get her when she couldn’t, when she was beyond it.’

‘I’m told she was a kind woman, once.’

‘She probably was. Bitterness is a disease. There could have been a breakdown.’

Andrew was looking round the cold room that was full of books and draughts, the distillation of a bigger house into a smaller one, cluttered with stuff. He noticed photos framed in tarnished silver and felt ashamed. They featured a younger Celia Hurly, with an uncanny resemblance to the beauty he had seen in the crumpled photo of yesterday. There were other photos of a man, holding aloft a large dead fish and looking happy in his achievement. A photo of Mr Successful Hurly outside a subfusc factory building, holding on to a SOLD sign, celebrating the sale of it. The abattoir, perhaps. There were also photos of young Jessica in fancy dress, young Jessica naked, and none whatever of all three of them together. There was a disused fireplace, and a desk with a brand new laptop still wrapped in polythene. Andrew shuddered like a dog shaking off water. At this point in time, he and Sarah did not understand one another. He wanted to go.

‘Did you really mean you’ll stay with her? Stay all night, I mean. I was just wondering,
why?’

Sarah was angling one of the photographs, making it straight. Although she was so colourful, she melded in anywhere, like a shadow, taking in the colours of the walls, moving at her own pace, to her own tune, which was sometimes harsh, sometimes musical. She leant forward, examined another of the photographs.

‘Because no one else wants to. You don’t, no one else does, I don’t either, but I shall. Your turn in the morning. She mustn’t be left alone – she saw her own daughter dead, recognised her as instantly as I did, and no mother deserves that. So I’ll sleep over. I’ve brought my stuff, so go home and
don’t worry. I shan’t be murdering her. I’ll just sit by her side in case she wakes up. Read some of these old books.’

Andrew hesitated. He was hesitation incarnate, somehow failing in duty, but above all he wanted to go away and pray. He rose to his feet, without grace.

‘If you insist,’ he said.

‘I’ll insist if it helps. Just for the night. Tomorrow her friends take over.’

‘Such as they are,’ he said.

So the pastor went with relief, leaving someone else to do pastoral care.

Later Sarah went upstairs and watched her sleeping charge. Wanting to wake her and ask more questions, such as why are there no Hurlys in the graveyard? Her own hands were as cold as ice. She warmed them on the ancient hot-water bottle she had unearthed in the kitchen, before placing it at Celia’s feet and tucking the sheet round the woman’s shoulders to ward off the draught from the window. What was a rich and not yet very old woman doing, living in a small house, sleeping in such a Spartan room with draughty windows? As if the bleak view was her punishment, or an antidote to grief.

Celia Hurly opened her eyes and looked into Sarah’s face. She stretched her feet towards the new heat at the end of the bed. The look she gave was one of trust, confused by diazepam but still trust, carrying in its glazed glance the appalling responsibility conveyed by any reliance, even that imposed
in extremis.

‘She was here,’ Celia Hurly said. ‘She was here, and she never came to see me. I could have stopped him, I should have pitied her rather than envied her. No one will pity me now.’

‘I do,’ Sarah said. ‘With all my heart. Sleep now.’

‘Thank you,’ Celia said, closing her eyes.

Sarah fetched a blanket, sat by the bed and waited.

She had no faith in police investigations. By now the witchhunt for Jeremy would be on. Out of the corner of one eye she had seen him running away, like a shadow. Ducking and diving among the traffic, running for his life. Others would have seen him, too. Jeremy along with his friend Jack, the only logical suspect, the only one capable of carrying out such a sick joke. The only one brutal enough, skilled enough. The ones who ran away.

She could see the headlines in the local paper, even the nationals.

Tomorrow or the next day she would read those headlines and go to London. Plan the next move, find help, follow instincts.

Not running away. Running towards.

B
ody of local girl found dead in butcher’s freezer. Two local men wanted for questioning
.

This annoyed Sarah. It was not a freezer, it was a chiller. A freezer was another thing altogether.

The train was a cultural shock in itself after weeks of mostly walking, relying on her own two legs. Even an empty train, as far removed from the stuffed-up London Underground as a distant cousin with a faint family resemblance. Sarah had forgotten how much she could appreciate a train journey simply for itself; how much she had relished her first trip down here for this experiment in living, taking a shot in the dark, following Jessica’s suggestions, feeling in control of her own independent destiny while all the time it was Jessica sealing her fate. But there had never been any real calculation in Jessica, as far as she knew. Jessica simply reacted to things. There had never been a master plan.