Cold to the Touch (24 page)

It would be the first great betrayal, therefore the worst, and no one would understand it. Jessica went on the rampage, just as she had when she found him again.

The music stopped, as if giving a signal to leave. A woman came in and walked briskly to the front of the church, carrying a bucket in one hand and a large feather duster in the other. Even a church could not clean itself. The sight of her broke the spell and made Sarah smile. Sanctity and practicality were always good companions, and
she thought of practical things and tried to finish the story in her mind.

What happened next? This was for the imagination. Ten years pass. Then hysterical Jessica, who came to London in search of instant fame and fortune, driven hither, happened upon him by accident because they were in parallel lines of business. Perhaps they fell upon one another, the first love of her life resumed. At first, joy and embracing, tears and explanations.
Your mother was to blame.
He would take her up, help her, take her into his new world, take pride in her, take her places, be proud of her. They would agree it was their secret, rejoice in it. But Jessica was a hungry, demanding soul; she wanted more and more: she wanted the years she had missed, she wanted to be with him every day. She wanted, above all, to take him home. She wanted him to go back.

Soon he would not want to see her every day: she got in the way of business. And then she would blackmail him for his lack of attention because she was angry, stuck in childhood, recklessly needy, a girl without boundaries in search of the old exclusive love, ready to threaten his whole new identity. She would cajole, persuade, behave as she did when she was a child. Expose him, above all, make him go home to Mummy, make Mummy happy again, make up for what they both had done. An obsessive in pursuit of the perfect life she thought they’d had. A rejected, violent child, her father’s daughter. Tantrums.

Jessica could ruin business. Jessica could never have enough. Jessica would never see how impossible her plans were.

The music began again, secular music rather than religious. This church embraced the non-believer. An old folk song, sung softly in the background.

Last night, she came to me,
She came softly in.
So softly she entered, her feet made no din.

She would not have come softly this time. Soft body, with eyes of steel, a woman scorned.
He stood me up.
Seeking him out in Das Kalb at night when she knew he would be there, when he was tidying up, when he was preparing, whenever. He was there on a Sunday night. They were closed on Mondays only: Sarah had checked. A fight, an accident. Ending with Jessica suspended by the ankles on a hook in that kitchen after everyone had gone home. A humane killing, a ritual cleansing as in an abattoir. Sanitised, slung over a shoulder when the blood was gone, maybe wrapped in muslin like a side of ham, taken to Smithfield that day or the next, inserted into the line. A brilliant method of disposal. Desperate men took desperate measures and had unreasonable expectations of their allies. When the man she was convinced was Edwin Hurly had set down next to her, Sarah could feel the power radiating from him. He was a disciplined bully with his daughter’s wonderful charisma and, like her, he would never quite gauge the impact he had on others. He would probably overestimate it.

Sarah left the church, bowing to the simple altar, reverting to a long-forgotten instinct to genuflect and make the sign of the cross, which would either encourage the love of God or ward off the Devil.
I have nothing to be ashamed of,
she said to St Bartholomew,
but I shall have if I don’t find out what happened. It is not about justice, because there is no justice. Truth would do. Truth helps the living far more than not knowing: there is no reconciliation without it. I would like it if I could guess what he might do next.
She had been trying to
think like him, put herself in his shoes, but she did not want him to be a murderer. Part of her wanted to walk away and just let him live.

She walked back towards Smithfield, skirted round the building, reaching the crowded pavements again, slowing down. It was a walk of a mile to home, but where was home? It was nowhere: it was on top of a cloud: it was somewhere where you could make a nest and defend it. It was somewhere you taught yourself to love, even if it did not love you back. It was somewhere where you could be useful. In the meantime, there was this constant craving for the sound of seagulls squabbling.

Sarah considered going back to Das Kalb, feeling the same pull as Jessica and wanting to confront him, even just to see him again. No. Leave it alone now. She was not going to be flayed alive; nor did she want vicarious revenge, but her own God would damn her if she let someone else be blamed. Her duty, if it could be called so, was not to Jessica, it was to the living. Damn duty, but it was always there. She acquired it wherever she went, whatever she did, and with whomever she slept, although that involved the least duty of all. The love for a lover was a pale shadow of the child’s love for a father.

She needed
proof.
She had found the bricks in the edifice of the story. The mortar was subject to decay. Proof was a long way off. The only fact of which she was certain was that the owner of Das Kalb was Jessica Hurly’s father, first seen in a grainy photograph, holding a fish. It was time to go home. Begin at the other end.

The meal lay heavily on Sarah’s stomach. She walked faster.

She wanted to pick up a bag and the chosen companion, go for the train and get home soonest, but it could not be
today. Again, she would have to wait. Wait for the day when the delivery man would come to Pennyvale. The day would arrive soon enough. Another Sabbath would pass.

T
he mist over the sea was a glorious blanket. After his morning walk, Andrew Sullivan admired the pristine glory of the vicarage living room and then walked uphill to help Sam. Sarah was going to love the new room. The mist disappeared and the day turned grey.

‘We made the national news,’ Sam grumbled. ‘For one day only. It’s insulting when you think of it. Then we faded. Help me out here.’

Tidying, scouring, cleaning. Sam was back in his own premises, not quite as happy as a pig in shit but almost. Such a bonus to be allowed to open again tomorrow, within a fortnight of being shut. The day went quietly. The chiller was perfectly empty.
She
might never have been there.

‘Smithfield delivery tomorrow. She says we have to wait. I spoke to the man, the same man, put in the order. He sounded fine, didn’t seem to know anything. Just said he wondered why we hadn’t ordered recently, not chatty. He couldn’t say what time he’d be here, said it depended on other deliveries, traffic and stuff, could be very early, could be after opening time. Would let himself in, if need be, if the traffic was fine, etc. Any time, I said, the earlier the better, gives me time to display. I reckon the earliest he’ll get here is five in the morning. I got the impression he wanted to be early.’

‘So we wait for him,’ Andrew said.

‘Back to yours, vicar? She said she’d come and join us with some hard man she knows. Why do we listen?’

‘Because we do. No choice about it. I don’t like the idea of the hard man.’

‘I’m glad she’s coming home.’

‘So am I. She’d better stay this time.’

‘I’m not gay, you know.’

‘Who did you think you were fooling? Wise man, you are. Otherwise you’d be target practice for all the widows in a place like this. Stay as you are, I would. Or confound them all by getting a wife. Are we ready?’

T
he darkest hours were before dawn.

Sarah Fortune was well used to the company of men, and wished with all her heart for the company of a woman on this occasion. She had never wanted to be the leader of the pack. Mike could take that role. It was he who had suggested the plan.
Find the delivery man? Needle in a haystack. Go and wait for him. Shake him until he rattles. Then you’ll have proof, or not. Proof that Miss Hurly never came home alive.

So they were waiting. The earliest time he could be here was five a.m., Sam said. OK – unless he really wants to avoid us, then he’ll be sooner. They had foregathered at four in the morning in the tiny upstairs flat above the butcher’s, with the window looking onto the dark street, a depressing place to be, although warmer than the back of the shop. There was a flask of tea, paper cups and grimy blankets on which to sit. Someone had provided sandwiches that no one wanted. The room was crowded with three men and one woman, the men feeling slightly ridiculous and manipulated. Andrew was gazing towards Sarah, looking for guidance, enjoying the sight of her, but wondering why he was there. Surely not as a priest; only as another male presence, a sort of makeweight who might curtail the excesses by his very presence, the soft man as opposed to the hard one. He had loathed Mike on sight and conceded to himself that there was jealousy in that.
They all knew the theory: they all knew why they were here, but the levels of belief varied, along with the anxieties. They were waiting for the delivery man who might have brought Jessica home. Sam had hardened his heart to anything except his chief priority, which was to make sure that the delivery was right so that he would open his doors for business and become himself again. Mike, the man with the frightening face, wanted to nail whatever bastard had killed a pretty woman, even if he did not care about the woman herself who sounded like a right spoiled bitch to him, but no one deserved to be hung. Sarah wanted to know if she was right. Mike and Sam were chatting man to man, Mike asking about business, always interested in someone else’s business. You never knew when information would come in handy, all knowledge was useful. Andrew was losing the will to live. Conversation became desultory, fell into silence. Then they were tense and silent and waiting, waiting, waiting.

The main street of the village was in darkness. No door left unlocked, no curtains left open. A street of barriers. A mild night for the time of year: it had been a long mild spell since Jessica had come back.

Only two cars passed in the hour. They could hear the sudden acceleration up the hill, the whizz as they went by. Then as they sat stupid and quiet, there was the sound of footsteps and of someone wheeling a trolley. A knock at the front door of the shop. Then running footsteps, following whoever it was. A voice saying,
There, there, come away, they aren’t open yet.

Celia Hurly and her shopping trolley went back down the hill. Total silence fell again. It was six o’clock.

‘Right,’ Sam said. ‘I’d better get on. Things to do. If that bastard doesn’t come with that bastard delivery, I’ll kill him. We can make better tea down there, anyway.’

He lumbered to his feet and went out of the attic, down the back steps and into the shop through the back door. They all got up and followed, crowding into the back of the premises. Mike put the kettle on and followed Sam into the still dark front of the shop, still curious, wanting to learn more. He would like to watch a skilled man sharpening his knives. ‘That’s one of the first things I do,’ Sam said. Mike listened: he always wanted to learn; you never knew what you might have to do next. They began to relax. It would be dawn within the hour and everything would stop being so unreal.

Sam moved towards the front door to turn on the lights. Before he got there the whole shopfront was swept with fierce light from the headlamps of a white van pulling onto the forecourt, halting so close to the window that he thought it was aiming to drive straight through. The headlamps went off. A door slammed, then another. They scuttled away like cockroaches.

‘Christ,’ Mike said. ‘There’s two of them.’

‘B
etter open the door,’ someone said.

Sam turned on the lights and opened the door. Two men came in. The regular small scared-looking delivery man in a white coat, and a handsome white-haired man in a suit and overcoat.

Mike moved towards the knife rack, took one of the knives and held it behind his back.

Sarah came out from the back of the shop into the bright light at the front. The throbbing glare was strong enough to hurt her eyes, going right to the back of the eyeball after all the darkness, creating a sudden violence. Sarah put her hand on Mike’s arm, let it rest there. She knew what he could do.

‘Dear God,’ Sam said. ‘Mr Edwin Hurly as I live and breathe.’

The man in the coat blinked at the light and slumped into the chair by the counter reserved for the elderly customers. He looked old and tired. He shielded his eyes and looked towards Mike.

‘You can put that down,’ he said. ‘I’m not dangerous. I’m nothing now, nothing at all. This light’s too bright. Never was like that before.’

They moved automatically, mesmerised, to stand around him in a rough circle.

‘You. You’re everywhere. S for Sarah. Jessica told me about you. Said you were a high-class hooker. The woman with the hook.’

She spoke softly. ‘Hooker, yes. High-class is overstating it a bit.’

He sighed and closed his eyes briefly, opened them again, pointing a finger at Andrew.

‘Who’s that streak of piss?’

‘He’s the vicar,’ Sam said. ‘And you just missed your wife.’

Edwin Hurly shuddered, sat up straight in the chair. He turned to Sarah.

‘Would you sleep with me if I paid you enough? Are you that kind of tart? Jessica reckoned you would. She wanted to give me you as a present, said you would persuade me to do what’s right. You did it anyway, didn’t you? Never mind, don’t answer. Thanks for leaving the paper. Thanks, but no thanks. The game’s over … some bloody game. I thought someone would be waiting, but not you, and not so many. Nice to see you, Sam Brady. You were always a good man. I’m sorry if fetching her home was bad for business. I thought you’d deal with it like I would have done. Businesslike.’

‘I don’t know what you would have done, Mr Hurly.’

‘Me? I’d have got her out in a boat and buried her at sea, just like I was asked. Best all round. Jeremy would have done that for you. That’s what she would have wanted. And
then I’d have got on with business. That’s what it’s all about. That was the decent, practical thing to do while she still looked nice. I left instructions, why didn’t you follow them? I didn’t want anyone blamed.’