Cold to the Touch (20 page)

S
he had memorised it in the way she could, repeated it to herself now, the way she would sometimes repeat a poem to steady herself.

They sat on a bench in Charterhouse Square. Mike lit a cigarette, drew the smoke deep into his lungs and exhaled slowly.

‘Gotta face it, doll, you might have hurt my feelings. You only asked me out tonight because you knew I worked Smithfield once. You want an entry there, right?’

‘Right.’

He shook his head.

‘You could have said so, doll. I thought you might have just wanted to see me. Buy me dinner and everything.’

Sarah plucked the cigarette from his hand and drew on it, then handed it back.

‘I picked you for your looks, and the way you can talk to anyone. And because I’d rather it were you than anyone else, even though it was you who once set a fire in my house. I trust you and I don’t and I do, and I must. You know the dark side of me and I you. I love you more than most. You can help or not. Up to you. Shall we go home?’

‘For free?’

She looked towards the sky and saw the penumbra of light surrounding the Smithfield market building.

‘Yes. It was usually free, if you remember. You smell so nice.’

He laughed and touched her cheek.

‘Bet you say that to all the boys, but I believe you. Let’s go home and get warm and you can tell me the rest. We’ve got the whole weekend to sort it. We can’t do Smithfield until Monday.’

Sarah began to cry, clutching the lapels of Mike’s coat.
He detached her gently in a gesture she recognised and appreciated. She would prefer to be treated with pragmatic detachment than with obsession. Practical kindness was better than anything.

‘Up you go,’ he said, hoisting her away from the bench. ‘Told you the fucking countryside would do you no good. You’ll be telling me you’re shagging the vicar next. Let’s go home.’

‘I don’t know where home is,’ she said. He kissed her gently.

‘It’s where the heart is,’ he said. ‘Even if it’s only there some of the time.’

It was much later when she told him more.

‘Daft bitch,’ he said. ‘Silly daft bitch. You’ve lost weight, you know.’

‘And you’ve got fatter.’

‘I never. Love that pendant you had on – what is it? Bit fierce, isn’t it? Yes, I know what it is. Could catch on.’

Sarah had taken it off as she took off her clothes. A light ornament, capable of many uses, looking like an initial on the heavy silver chain she had found for it. An S-shaped hook, borrowed from Sam Brady, dipped and polished to a shine. A butcher’s hook, a weapon. An icon, something to touch for luck. Or use to strike.

Exhausted by stumbling explanation, she found herself talking about a kitchen that gets a steam clean every night. Machinery to mop up pints of spillage and put it down the drain. There would never be any trace. That was where she was going, it has to be
there
. But Jessica’s man was never that chef, she wouldn’t have gone near him. I thought the Lover would be one of those powerful, emotional chefs who bought his own meat, but it’s the owner who buys the meat in
Smithfield, but he’s too old. He can’t even drive. Way too old. Jessica liked prime specimens.

‘You’re never too old,’ Mike said.

She dreamt of the sea.

Wait until Monday. It was always better to wait.

Wait and enjoy the waiting.

T
here was a fine mist over the sea. The line fanned out either side of the cliff path, looking half-heartedly for traces of murder. For where a body had been kept or dragged, or preserved. They had been slow to get going, checking the abattoir first.

Brady collected the small amounts of local beef he got from there as and when the orders were dressed, pigs on another day. Dressed, sanitised, hair singed away, cut into halves or quarters, never a whole carcass. They would help him load stuff into his van. He was fifty-six and could still move most of it all by himself. In the beef line, he sold neck, chuck, forerib, sirloin, rump, topside leg, leaving neck and breast for sausage. He had no use for heads, feet and tails, although he kept the odd pig’s head for a customer. There was no time in this shop for making brawn out of brains or pet food out of beasts’ cheeks. Everything that came from the abattoir was already beheaded. He kept a few bones for dogs.

There had been ice houses in the shallow reaches of the
cliffs, where people had stored meat in winter years ago. Celia Hurly knew about these because her husband had known of them: so had her daughter. There was no map: they were randomly placed, family-owned. Small outdoor larders, fashioned from the shallow caves that were formed out of the fissures in the clay, packed with perishable food to preserve it during the long days of Lent. The ice houses were found in the areas where the sun never reached, the coldest places. Apart from the local historian, the only other people who knew about the ice houses were the children who had played in them.

For Andrew Sullivan, it was the saddest of all things to see a few of the older village men leading a posse of policemen down into the lee of the cliff to find the places where they had once played hide-and-seek. They were looking for a place where a body might have been slaughtered, hung, bled dry and left undiscovered for two days. It had to be the older ones who led the hunt: it seemed that the younger ones no longer played in the same way and were not encouraged to explore on their own. They sat indoors in front of TV screens, or were taken to places in cars. Only a few volunteers had turned up for the delayed search. They consisted of the historian, and seven others who had once been Boy Scouts. The only upside of the murder had been a record church attendance on Sunday, where the police had used the occasion to plead for further information.

Andrew followed behind the search, feeling redundant. He was ashamed of his own ignorance of the place. He had never been interested enough in the details, took his mandatory exercise along favourite routes without much deviation or curiosity. Not only did he not know where to look, he had no faith in the search itself.

Sam Brady was also part of the ragged team. The ice houses had still existed, if only just, when he’d been a boy. He had no faith in this search either, but he had to join it because to refuse to do so would be suspicious and he was not beyond suspicion himself. He thanked his own God for the fact that there were other witnesses to the fact that the body could only have arrived overnight on the night when it did, otherwise, in the absence of Jeremy, there would only have been his word for it. Sam was also grateful for the fact that Sarah had taken away the dog. She was right: the dog would have damned him as a pervert.

They had searched for three days in what seemed like a desultory fashion. It had been a game at first, but all games must have winners and losers, and here there were only losers, so it became dull. The search went further afield in daylight hours only. After dark, everyone went home, locked their doors and drew their curtains close against the wind. Maybe they prayed.

They should have been searching at night, if they had either the sense or the courage, Andrew thought. At nighttime the fugitives were as free as birds. The night was their ally. The night would allow them to sabotage whatever was found. They were safe at night. The night was their territory and they had allies.

Something was found. Namely, a shallow grave, recently dug, containing the half-frozen body of a dog, carefully wrapped in a sheet, buried with respect. Sam Brady kept his mouth firmly shut in public. Then there was disappointment, because this, after all, had nothing to do with anything. It was only a dog and people buried dogs.

‘But it has everything to do with it, you see,’ Sam said to Andrew. ‘It proves they’re still around. They’re right in the
frame because they were in the flat above the shop the night when Jessica was put in the chiller. They never drove off anywhere, the van was left, they’ve nowhere else to go. They’ve had plenty of time to bury the dog nicely. Look, vicar, let me tell you about the dog. I need to confess.’

‘I don’t think you’ve got anything on your conscience, Sam, I really don’t.’

They had taken to sitting in the still half-painted drawing room of the vicarage in the evening. Sam had retreated there, weeping, after the police had removed every ounce of stock from his shop and sealed it. It was like another death. It all felt as if it was his own fault and his wife could not understand how he could have been so clumsy to let such a thing happen.

Grief, shock and anger combined into a kind of fog through which he struggled to find any kind of view at all. Surprisingly, the vicar helped; Sam had never been a person who’d thought he would consult a pansy vicar, but Andrew was all right, really. Wine and beer eased the passage. They had even laughed about Celia Hurly, confessing to each other that they were afraid of her. Sam did not want to go home and Andrew did not want to do his duty and go downhill and speak to Mrs Hurly again before tomorrow. He would have to do it then: he was under orders. Curtains were drawn. A summer’s evening was a distant dream.

A reckless fire flickered in the fireplace. The chimney worked after all. Andrew had begun to use some of the hated furniture for kindling. One of the uglier rotting chairs that he had dismembered in a fury burned merrily in the hearth. Sam stretched his legs towards it.

‘You never knew Jack Dunn, did you? Well, no, of course not. Feckless bugger, too much cannabis and no dad, adored
Jessica for a while, one of her regulars. He came and went and finally rented one of the Hurly cottages, the one Sarah has, and oh, I wish she’d come back. Anyway, Jack had this bitch mongrel and he called it Jess, out of sentiment, because he liked repeating the name. Loved it and neglected it, you know? The way blokes do with wives. A bloke can be crackers about his woman without having the faintest idea how to treat her. The bitch was demented. He left it alone when he went to work: he got drunk, she got out, didn’t behave, how could she? A cur dog, really, too clever by half. Wrong temperament – I’m telling you, vicar, if you ever get a dog, and you should, by the way, don’t get any kind of sheepdog like that. They need too much, they’re too fucking bright. Pack animal needs a leader. It bit a couple of the kids, but it was a sweet thing really, if you knew what to do. If you let it lick your hand.’

He coughed in embarrassment. The comparisons between the canine Jess and the human Jessica Hurly were all too real.

‘Jack left her with Mrs Hurly when he went away. In lieu of rent or something. Left her tied up on the doorstep, thinking she’d take care of her because of the name. I don’t know if he asked first, but Mrs H. shut her out, and then she went a bit mental. She was roaming around for weeks and no one could catch her, not even Jeremy until he found her.’

Andrew shuddered and looked towards the closed curtains. Sam took a huge handful of nuts and shoved them down his throat.

‘He was after rabbits with his air rifle when he found her. Someone else had shot her with a shotgun – she was full of holes, he told me. She was starving and wounded, dying in pain, so he killed her properly. Kindest thing to do. He finished her off and laid her out on the road in the warm. It’s
always warmer on the road in the morning. He wanted it to look as if someone had run her over, because he’d be blamed for the shooting, although he’s not the only one out there hunting rabbits at night, and quite a few people wanted that bitch dead, but he’d be blamed anyway. Only it was me who found her next. I was coming back from the abattoir about five, saw her on the road, stopped in time. I always drive slow when I’ve got a load. I knew who she was, so I took her home, dressed her nicely, shrink-wrapped her and put her in the chiller. She was a lovely thing, really, and I reckoned that if Jack ever came right he’d want to bury her. Jeremy, too. Closure and all that. You got to give an animal respect, even when it’s dead. Part of my code. We always bury animals. I’ve got two of my old dogs out in the garden.’

Andrew reached for the wine. Sam had a good taste for the stuff and Sam would need a taxi home.

‘I don’t get it. He’d be content for the poor bitch to be squished on the road, and then he’d want to bury it?’

Sam shrugged. He could see nothing inconsistent in that. Andrew shook his head, trying to clear it.

‘But where did they get the dead dog from?’

‘Sarah’s freezer, I expect. They can do what they want after dark. No one’s watching then.’

Andrew was still puzzled. He was angry with Sarah for defecting, as he saw it, both from them and from Mrs Hurly with whom she had formed a strange and unlikely liaison in the course of a day. But he appreciated what she was doing insofar as he understood it and he was answering everything she asked by e-mail in a spirit of trust. If she was convinced that Jessica had been killed in London, of course she had to do what she did, because no one else could, but he still had the disappointment of a man half in love and who has been left.
Celia Hurly, thank God, wanted little company other than that of the mad, deaf woman who fed the birds outside her house. He went every afternoon, often armed with Sarah’s questions. Andrew wished he believed in God’s ultimate deliverance rather than having to believe in the vagaries of human nature. He too found himself wanting to confess.