Cut To The Bone (21 page)

"And who's this?" The Fawn enquired, while balancing four plates of tiny meringues in both hands. More like dollops of pigeon shit, thought Louis. 

The Maggot gave their names, adding, “both are music students from the Institute. They’ve big futures ahead."

"I see." She smiled stiffly, leaving an electric tension in her wake, far worse than anything outside.

"It’s the menopause," Louis explained out of her earshot. "Not her fault."

The Maggot coughed before leading the bemused couple out on to the lawn. Refreshments and the makeshift bar were then carried on to what remained of the yellow grass, and by 7.15 p.m. the small audience had arrived and stood in an awkward group by the patio doors.

*

Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Beethoven's Archduke Trio took the proceedings to the interval, with everyone unaware of the latest item on the local television news that a second schoolboy - this time from the
Sunnyview
Children's Home – hadn’t returned for his dinner.

Louis who'd acquitted himself well on his Guenari, excused himself and ran upstairs to The Maggott's bedroom to search for his sheathed knife and its plywood box. The open window overlooked the back garden affording an aerial view of him chatting up Honey Girl, closer than he ever stood with The Fawn. Also how his hand touched hers while passing her an orange juice. How he brought his mouth to her ear then sprang away when Greg Willis approached.

Randy old goat
.

Ice cubes tinkled in glasses against the rumbling from the sky, and sudden spurts of laughter floated upwards as Louis plundered the pine chest of drawers full of neatly- folded underpants and socks bound up in tight balls. Handkerchiefs with D in the corner, the odd Valentine to The Fawn with ink faded to the colour of piss. A ticket for
The Messiah
at the Cathedral four Christmases ago. A packet of Durex Ultra Lite, unused.

He searched the matching wardrobe, quicker now - his hands raking through unworn dressing gowns, racks of trousers and shirts in colour order.

"What are you doing?" A voice rang out.

The Maggot.

"Where's that knife and its box?" Louis challenged him.

"This is my room. Get out." 

He was quivering. His skin purply round his nose.

"Tell me."

"They went to the tip first thing this morning, where they should have gone all along. Now," he reached for Louis' arm, lowering his voice, "I suggest you get your tuning sorted out. You can't let people down, you know."

"You can."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You're letting Mum down by screwing that Carla tart. And I'll tell her. So there."

26

Thunder still mumbled over Dingle Wood as the sun slipped in and out of clouds casting the faces of all in the garden into a ruddy glow. The red wine into old blood.

The Tipsy Fawn's white dress was already stained, as bottle in hand, she topped up, leaving no room for her lips. Occasionally, her pink, high-heeled sandals would stick into the turf and she'd topple forwards leaving them behind.

On the last occasion, Gunther Zeller tracked her with lumbering steps, holding the discarded footwear aloft. Louis missed nothing while sipping a sour, white wine by the patio doors, including how The Maggot glanced at Carla and Greg busy popping cocktail sausages into each other's mouths. That is, until a powerful shriek issued from the lower edge of the lawn made everyone freeze.

Sherry Linberg appeared, her hands covering her mouth as she teetered across the curve of grass, her wine glass rolling down towards Willow Brook's bank.

"Oh my God!” She screamed. “My God!"

Louis ditched his glass and joined the stampede towards her. The collective fear keeping his dick happy. Carl, the pilot husband arrived first, then turned away, retching as the smell from the brook intensified.  Someone led his hysterical wife away to a chair on the patio.

"What the hell was that?" Linberg wiped his mouth.

"A body of some sort,” said someone else whom Louis didn’t recognise. “Jesus Christ…"

"No way. It's all black. Besides, how did it get here?"

The Maggot elbowed his way to the bank, holding his nose and squatting down at the spot where only recently he'd flayed nettles and dock to create more of a feature.

What could only be a human corpse had beached up against the lawn, occasionally jerking on the sluggish current. Louis gagged as a clump of reddish hair showed through the black slime, but the rest, except for the hint of a white trainer, was sealed in thick, viscous tar. Bluebottles who’d transferred their attention to the onlookers, were slapped and swiped at, to no avail.

Greg Willis punched 999 on his mobile.

"Fourteen Meadow Hill. Dr. Perelman’s place.” He snapped at whoever had answered. “Looks like a stiff’s showed up at the bottom of his garden..."

The Maggot stood up, his face grey despite the sun's strength. He saw the young lovers move off, locked together, and shrugged to himself as if inwardly acknowledging some defining moment. He then strode away from the brook's stench, the sudden bubbling from what might have been a mouth, past his tipsy partner and the boy with the lump in his trousers who made no attempt to stop him.

*

Sirens grew louder as a police car and ambulance swerved into the crescent and stopped on the Perelman’s drive. Their spinning lights made Louis blink and attracted most of Meadow Hill on to their dry front lawns. All except Darshan Patel and his family.

Louis watched the unfolding drama with a weird detachment as Jarvis and a young, female cop plus paramedics ran down to the brook. After a brief recce of the scene, the bin-linered corpse was arranged on a stretcher and carried through the side gate, leaving a trail of filthy blobs on the pale slabs. It resembled a huge, black slug, Louis thought, maintaining his look of concern.

"No-one’s to go near that spot!" Constable Jarvis bellowed. "Forensics will need to take a look." With that he produced a length of blue and white POLICE tape and secured it to two decorative boulders.

"What a dreadful end to the day." whined Yvonne Dunkley who’d normally be singing her Hugo Wolf songs. She comforted Louis whilst straightening his bow tie and complaining about the times they lived in. How a young boy of impressionable age shouldn't be witness to such terrible things. Louis thanked her, letting her fetch him another glass of wine. Sweeter than the first.

The Fawn followed the procession towards the ambulance, still unsteady on her bare feet, pushing Gunther Zeller's hand away from her left buttock as the vehicle's doors slammed shut and the soirée party dispersed to their cars or their driveways. Louis glimpsed Honey Girl and the oboist speed away without so much as a backwards glance. Without even their leathers on, while the Maggot, staring after them from The Fawn's bedroom window, turned away as the sky suddenly darkened and the thunder deepened.

*

"Just a few questions if we may." Jarvis leant against the kitchen table, iPad again at the ready, while PC Truelove stayed near The Fawn. Her lipstick remarkably red. “Is your husband around?"

"I'll go.” Louis crunched up his crisps’ packet and pushed it into the full pedal bin. "He's upstairs."

Not true. Everywhere was empty. The family bathroom, box room, five bedrooms with en-suites. The vast airing cupboard…

Louis ran to that same front window where The Maggot had stood. His heartbeat uneven.

"Is he there?"  The Fawn called from the foot of the stairs.

"Nope, and his Discovery's gone."

"Oh my God!"

Louis returned to a jumble of voices, with no-one making any sense, least of all her. "Maybe he's upset," he volunteered.  "After all, he'd planned this
soirée
for ages."

Her look of pride also held anxiety.

"Yes. That's what it is. How silly of me to think anything else. Thank you, son." 

That last word brought a twitch of a smile to his lips, soon suppressed as she filled the electric kettle and set out four mugs. "Tea or coffee, anyone?"

The officers conferred then declined. Jarvis pocketed his iPad, saying, “when Dr. Perelman does come back, we'd like to know if he noticed anything unusual in that brook prior to this evening. Perhaps when he last mowed or strimmed near there." He patted Louis' head for the second time. "We'll be in touch. Meanwhile, look after your mother.”

“I always do.”

"Just one thing," Jane Truelove stalled by the front door. "My colleague here hadn’t mentioned this next bit of news for a very good reason, and we'll be putting in a complaint to the BBC’s local radio station first thing tomorrow."

"What bit of news?" The Fawn re-hung the mugs on the mug tree.

"There's another young lad about your son's age been missing since last Thursday after school. He's from
Sunnyview
in North Barton.”

"The children's home?" Louis propped himself up against the fridge, his face inscrutable.

"Correct. Toby Lake. Keen fisherman, always taking himself off, sometimes for two nights at a time. Why we didn't want to run the story yet, in case he got scared. Stayed away longer and found himself in more trouble."

"He was scared stiff of Mrs Parsons there," Louis volunteered, thinking the rod and shoes must have since been nicked, and regretting having mentioned Lakey's name to The Fawn.

“Was?”

“Is. She’s always nagging him about something."

"Know him well, do you?" Jarvis asked. "I gather he's in your form at school."

A nod. “You could have a laugh with him."

"Could?" Quizzed the pig again…

Fuck.

"I mean ‘can.’ He's cool."

"If he makes contact, let us know, OK?"

Louis nodded again, and with that, both visitors let themselves out, and the thudding of their car doors coincided with another rumble of thunder.

*

By nine o'clock, with still no sign of his not-real dad, the back lawn stood empty save for the Yamaha stranded like some black sarcophagus against the hostile sky. Louis also noticed cocktail sticks with cheese squares still attached, lying askew; the odd silverskin onion and anchovies where paper plates had been suddenly dropped. 

He offered up a prayer, not for Jez's soul, or Toby Lake. Instead, for a Great Misfortune to befall Darshan Patel which would take him out for good. For Jarvis and the other uniforms to fail, and finally for him, Louis Claus Perelman to find the one answer he needed. 

"Surely that's not too much to ask?" he added. "And while you're at it, God, get a fucking move on."

When finished, he noticed The Fawn's head stuck out of the study window where he'd heard her make no end of fruitless phone calls. 

"Louis? What are you doing out there?”

“Praying.”

“I've heated up some soup," she said, still sounding drunk. He loped into the house and skipped over the Yamaha's extension lead as lightning ripped the sky open over Dingle Wood. The tomato soup was the same colour as that hair which had popped out of the sludge. Most lay spooled on the kitchen table. 

The Fawn sat at the end, her face whiter than ever. Her eye make-up on her cheeks.

"It's like some terrible nightmare, isn't it?” She burbled.  “And your Dad going off like that..."

Feeling generous, Louis let the Dad bit go.

"He'll be back," he reassured her. "Besides, east west, home's best."

"Who said that?"

"Frau Zeller. They’re thinking of bunking off back to Frankfurt."

"You don't think that corpse belonged to the Martin boy, do you?" she quizzed. "Or even the
Summerview
  lad? I mean, it hardly seemed an adult’s weight." She drank from her soup bowl leaving a vampirish rim around her lips. Louis ignored his.

"I bet Jez Martin went with some pusher,” he said. “You know how it is over there. As for Lakey, well, he's always showed up before. Hey, Mum?" His big brown eyes suddenly fixed on her. "Remember that forty quid I mentioned? Well, I actually need it now."

Silence.

"Then that'll be it. Keep 'em off my back."

“Who’s them?”

“I’ve already told you. Tossers from school.”

She pulled her handbag towards her, opened her wallet and tried not to focus on baby Louis who stared out at her from under his grubby plastic cover. He spotted his photo and peered over her shoulder.

"How old was I there?" 

"Five months. I don’t know why you keep asking." 

"Did you mind having a Caesarean for me? I mean, did it hurt?"

He didn’t like the way she paused. He’d obviously caught her on the hop.

"Er… No, course not. Often it's the only way."

She didn’t sound convincing at all.

"But you're size eight shoes."

"The surgeon advised it. Now let me concentrate..."