PAIN HAS A PERMANENT ADDRESS - READ BETWEEN THE LIES

PAIN HAS A PERMANENT ADDRESS - EPISODE ELEVEN

  I ducked under the police tape and walked to the entrance.  The air smelled fresh, the feel of the ground beneath my feet steadied me, and I climbed easily up the track without too much discomfort with my knee. I took a different route than before and came across a collection of stones, which had been there aeons of time, where during a battle many years ago soldiers had sharpened their swords.  I went towards them and when I reached one, I put my hand and touched its cold damp surface.  I felt its heaviness pressed into the earth and how the strength of ages came through it.

  I moved on, past the bushes and undergrowth where I had been so terrified before, but this time, all I saw was nothing but innocent twisted roots and branches, briers and brambles and scrub and rabbit holes.

  I was getting out of breath now where the light was strengthening steadily. I had almost reached where ancient oaks stood, a landmark for the whole of Oxmarket.  The branches stirred slightly, making a dry noise.  There was a stone bench, just a slab across the two other slabs and I sat and turned towards the east and the sky. 

  Somewhere on the lower slopes, far down I heard a whistle.  I could make out the cathedral clearly from where I sat, the stone tower touched by the sun.

  After a few minutes, I stood up and started on my way back towards the entrance. I stopped and leaned on a tree when I heard a slight sound, perhaps a step, perhaps a rustle of wind in the undergrowth.  I turned my head to try and make it out.  No wind or breeze in this part of the forest and the air was quite still.  It came again, a few yards below me, but whether it was to the right or left I could not tell.

  A bolt of fear struck me numb, as if my breath had stopped.  My heart pounded in my ears like waves rushing.  I could not see anything and I dared not move.  I was paralysed by fear and by the realization of my vulnerability.  How stupid had I been to return to the crime scene without telling anyone? I became acutely aware of the slightest sound or movement but now there were none.  I felt the forest pressing in on me, heavy and suffocating.  I became disorientated, not daring to move because I did not know which way would lead me back to the exit and safety.  I gripped the cold damp trunk of the tree for support or comfort.  The tree was a living thing, part of the universe and linked to me; if I stayed in touch with it, I would be strong and safe.

  Somewhere not far away in the forest something made a slight sound, then again, but this sound was different, not a rustle or a whisper, but a faint, thin scratching.

  Taking a deep breath and leaving hold of the tree I headed down the grassy track.  My chest hurt with the effort of breathing hard and the strain and tension of running in a panic.  The pain in my knee was intolerable by the time I reached the exit. 

  A car had parked at a funny angle across it.  Someone seemed to be half slumped on the front seat.  There was no movement at all.  Either the driver was leaning in to fiddle with something down near the foot pedals, as if the car had broken down, or he was hurt or had been taken ill.

  I went nearer and pushed myself between the driver’s side door and the bushes, thinking quickly, wondering if I should call for help or shout, whether I would have to give first aid. 

  The branches of the hedge fell back, and I was beside the driver.  Then, he moved, pulling himself quickly backwards with a single strong movement.  I felt very relieved, realizing that I had been dreading what I might have found, a victim of a heart attack or another mutilated body.

The driver of the car looked straight at me and smiled.

  “Hello, John.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Detective Inspector,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed and a frown formed.  ‘Plain-clothes Officer’ had to be the biggest misnomer going:  even in civvies, policemen rarely looked like anything other than policemen.  The way they dressed, their facial depression, their body language, it was all a dead giveaway, and Paul Silver was the dictionary definition of police.  He had watched me come all the way down the path eyes never leaving me.

  “I hoped to find you, John.  I want to chat with you about what has happened to you since I ordered you off the case.”

  I got in the passenger seat of his car, but I left the door open.  My knee was killing me and the right-hand side of my back wasn’t feeling that great either.  I glanced into the back of the car and noticed a recently bought box of chocolates on the back seat

  “What are you working on at the moment, John?”

  I paused before answering.  Silver had removed me from this case and I wasn’t satisfied with the reason he gave. I wanted to talk to him as much as he wanted to talk to me.  But he was an experienced policeman, and they were always the most controlled; less prone to slip-ups.  They had a feel for the flow of conversation and where it was headed, and if he saw it going somewhere he didn’t like he’d shut it down.  I doubted Silver would tell me anything about his investigation purely out of choice.  I'd have to get at Silver the way I'd get at anyone, I'd have to corner him.

   We talked in general terms about the fire, the car crash and about the missing DVD, but as I’d expected, Silver side-stepped anything important.  I was no better, pretending to be hardly interested in the answers that I got.  This was all an act by me for Silver’s behalf, but I still wanted the truth.  Without it, I risked him ruining my investigation and possibly risking my life even further.

  Silver started off by talking about a raid they’d carried out on the kennels, but most of it sounded like a press release that he’d signed off. But then, about a minute in, as he danced around a potential revelation about the fact that the kennels were deserted.  A thought came to me:  Why had Silver come to find me?  He was a Detective Inspector, probably twenty years past door-to-doors.  I quickly considered the reasons: a lack of manpower, but that seemed doubtful given the gravity of the crime. I knew he was the type that liked a firm hand on the tiller, one who didn’t fully trust anyone’s instinct but his own; but much more likely was that he’d decided he would come and find me to discover how much I knew.

  At the start of our conversation, Silver had taken out a pen and a pad and set them perfectly parallel to one another on the dashboard of his car.  He began, flipping open the front page of his pad.  It had no notes in it at all, although slivers of paper remained in the spiral binding where he’d recently torn them out.  Sometimes the clearest picture of a person came from the smallest things:  the way he’d set his pen and paper down parallel to one another pointed towards a meticulous mind; the way he’d torn out the last notes in the pad – as if to keep them away from prying eyes – suggested a suspicious one too.

As we spoke he took notes.  I flicked a glance at he was writing, but it looked like it was some sort of shorthand – except I knew shorthand and I couldn’t decipher it.  A system only he can translate, a way to disguise his thoughts.

  We continued to talk, and he wrote something else down, on a fresh line and in a fresh jumble of words.  He was trying to lead me somewhere.  Finally, when he looked up, there was nothing in his face.  An unreadable blank, and it was then I realized what was different about him.

  “I was just thinking that you should change that shirt before you go home.  You’ve been wearing it since yesterday, which means you didn’t go home last night.  You were with another woman, at her place.  Lipstick – left side of the collar, below your ear.  You didn’t have a spare shirt, so you wore this one again and sprayed it with her deodorant.”

  His eyes narrowed but said nothing. 

  “I also noticed the box of chocolates in your office – expensive, Belgian – for your wife. You must like this mistress a lot, but you don’t want the affair to wreck your marriage.  Good luck with that.”

  “You mustn’t tell Philippa,” he pleaded and then proceeded to break down in front of me.  “She’s pregnant again.  Pregnant at forty-one?  I ask you?”

  “I’m sure she’ll be okay.” 

  “Oh, she’ll be okay, but it’s me.  Another mouth to feed.  You know as well as I do that, this is about as far as I will go, career-wise.”

  “And the way you deal with that is to have an affair.”

  “I know, I’ve been so stupid.”

  People teem with their information.  It leaks from their pores, sprouts from their mouths, reveals itself in every mannerism, tic, and twitch.  Whether they are shy, materialistic, body conscious, vain, fluent in cliché, brimming with aphorisms and tabloid axioms, they reveal themselves in thousands of different ways.

  And almost unconsciously I pick up these signals, reading their body language and registering the clues.  I used to want to know why things happened.  Not any more.  I don’t want to be able to see inside people’s heads.  It’s like knowing too much.  It’s like living too long or witnessing too many events; experienced things to the point of fatigue.

  People are complicated, cruel, brave, damaged, and prone to outrageous acts of brutality and kindness.  I know the causes.  I know the effects.  I have been there and back again and bought the souvenirs.  It’s not that I don’t care any more.  I’ve done my bit.  Someone else should shoulder the burden.

  “Who is it?”  I asked.

  “What?”

  “Who are you having an affair with?”

  He looked at me and I could see the glaze of uncertainty dulling his eyes like Vaseline smeared on a lens.

  Sometimes I wonder why I did this work.  What pleasure is there in it?  Even the satisfaction of solving a case just means another one is waiting.  There is never a cessation of hostilities or a negotiated truce, never an ultimate victory. 

  Eventually, the eternal nature of the struggle wears you down – the circle of cause and effect, crime and punishment, guilt and innocence, victims, and perpetrators.  You don’t stop feeling – you just wish you could.

  “It’s Cowan Carter,” he said after a lot of deliberation.

  “And that is why you no longer wanted me on the case.”

  He looked at me with sadness.

  “I have never felt so ashamed in all my life,” his voice wavered with emotion.  “I’m a failure, John.  A bloody failure.  I have to hire a consulting private detective to solve my cases for me.  I had become the laughingstock of the Suffolk Constabulary.  I felt impotent.  And then I went to see Cowan Carter on my own.  And she lured me in.  Using her s****l prowess she ensnared me.  And like a soppy old fool, I fell for it.”

  He reached across me and opened the glove compartment to produce a small bottle of whisky, cracking the seal and pouring himself a slug in a coffee mug.  I watched him swallow it and squeeze his eyes shut as the liquor scalded his tongue and the warmth exploded into his stomach.

  He raised the bottle.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  He poured another shot and screwed on the lid, replacing the bottle in the glove compartment.

  “Jesus, John.  What have I done?”

  He rested his elbows on the top of the steering wheel, pressing his thumb pads into his eyes.

  “Nothing that cannot be sorted.”

  Silver looked rueful.  “It’s easy to have faith when you don’t have to wear the failure.”

  “Where has Cowan Carter gone, Paul?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.  “I have no idea.”

  “You tipped her off, didn’t you?  That the kennels were about to be raided.”

  He didn’t reply, but just slowly nodded his head.  He sat there waiting for me to decide.

  “Okay, I will help you, but first I want you to take me to the kennels.”

  “Why?”

  “I might be able to work out where she has gone.” 

Chapter Thirty

The local coastal roads were choked with caravans and tourist coaches that looked like jammed logs on a flooded river.  Already I wished I hadn’t let the Detective Inspector talk me into this.  He’d piqued my professional interest.  No, he’d dangled the bait and sank the hook, reeling me in like a fat trout.

  Despite the traffic, he kept to the coast road, crossing rolling hills and descending into Swales, past white-painted cottages, farmhouses, and livestock yards.  Stunted trees were clinging to the ridges, bent arthritically as though crouching in expectation of future storms.

  As I had expected, we came to a mound of flowers that obscured the entrance to the kennels.  Cards, candles, and hand-painted signs littered the driveway.  One of them read: Justice for Buster.  Crime scene tape had been threaded between the gateposts and torn by previous vehicles.  Faded and fraying, it flapped like leftover party decorations.

  Turning off the road, we passed through the gates of the kennels.  I stepped out of the car and a gust of wind blew through the trees, making me restless.

  I noticed the splintered wooden panel on the front door.  Someone had punched a hole big enough to reach through and turn the latch.  Silver’s key opened the padlock.  The door swung inward onto duckboards arranged like stepping stones down the length of the hallway.  I looked at my shoes.

   “Don’t bother,” he said, reading my thoughts.  “Forensics have been over the place twice.”

  We stepped inside and my eyes fell upon the multitude of pictures lining the walls of the hallway.  At the far end, I saw the large open kitchen with the sitting room on the right and dining room on the left.

  The atmosphere in the house had changed.  It felt as if someone had opened a door or window, subtly altering the air pressure or temperature.

  “What do you think?”

  I didn’t respond and couldn’t find any words.  Silver waited.  He looked older, as if the house had aged him, like someone leaving the mythical world of Shangri-La.  The stress had pouched the skin below his eyes and deepened the wrinkles on his forehead.

  Every fibre of my being screamed at me to walk away.  Just go home.  Don’t look back.  Kira would hate me getting involved so soon after the car accident.  She’d blame me.  Yet almost without thinking, I found myself collecting details and picturing events.

  This was what I was good at.  I look at the scene and imagined the act, replaying it in my mind, identifying the psychological markers that underpin each element of human behaviour.  I have seen and heard many disturbing things in my small blown-up offices.  I have helped the sad, the lonely, the disconnected, the angry, the anxious, the jealous, the suicidal and the murderous.  I have plumbed the depths of human misery, yet I know there is always another layer, darker and more dangerous.

  “Can I go and have a look around on my own?”  I asked.

  “Be my guest, I’ll wait for you in here.”

  I walked along the hallway into the kitchen.  Twin cups were draining beside the sink next to a single wine glass.  Rubber gloves were hanging on the tap.  The Aga stove was cold.

  A dripping tap made a dull plinking sound like someone plucking on a single harp string.  Standing at the kitchen sink, I gazed out of the window where the shadows were lengthening and trees were etched against the roofs of the kennels.

  “They left all the dogs here?”  I shouted to the Detective Inspector.

  “Apart from the guide dog.”  His voice boomed down the hallway.

  At the top of the narrow staircase, I followed a landing through the length of the house.  There were bedrooms on either side.  Some of them had en-suite bathrooms, which were naked shells, half-finished, awaiting tiles and fittings.  Drop sheets on the floors held tools and bags of tiling grout awaiting the return of tradesmen.

  I reached an attic room with a single bed tucked beneath the sloping roof.  It had to be Isabella’s room.  Messy.  Cluttered.  Clothes were hanging on radiators and spilling from drawers and wicker baskets. A dog basket and a drinking bowl occupied the corner. A bra hung from the doorknob.  Dirty clothes had missed the hamper.  Photographs were stuck on the walls.  Photographs of me.  Lots of them.  Most of them taken recently.  Why would a blind girl want photographs of me?  DI Silver must have known about them.  Why hadn’t he mentioned it?

  I made my way downstairs and called out the Detective Inspector’s name.  I listened for a reply, but I heard nothing.

  Silence.

  He still sat in the same chair.  His head had rocked forwards and his hand clutched his throat, trying to stop the blood that bubbled through the fingers.  He groaned and his chin lifted, his eyes met mine, death with them.  Coming soon.

  I held my hand over his throat, my fingers covered my hand, increasing the pressure, but his carotid artery had been severed.  He bled out and lost consciousness.  I wanted to tell him I’m sorry.  I should have stayed with him.

  At that moment, his head rocked forwards and his body shuddered once before his heart stopped, the pump dry.  In the sudden quietness, I felt a small ceaseless tremor vibrating inside me, expanding, filling my chest and throat with emotion.

  I looked out to the hallway.  The silence seemed to be mocking me.  I dropped to my haunches, removed my phone from my pocket and called Oxmarket Police station.

  By the time darkness closed in, and it had started to rain quite heavily, the forensics team who had been crawling over every inch of the house were still working, turning what had been a home into a crime scene, invading, scouring, prying, fingerprinting, photographing.  What the pathologist did to a body the forensic team did to a house, violating everything – it always seemed to me like this, in spite of the respectful way in which the professions were taught to go about their business.

  I sat on the bottom step of the staircase while all this activity continued around me.

  A Detective Inspector, one that I had never seen before, had arrived.  He was holding an umbrella above him, talking to a couple of uniforms.  He then came in as I was giving my initial statement and listened to what I had to say.  He looked officious and naturally inclined to disbelieve anything anyone had to say, which was good preparation for what was coming next.  After this new arrival nodded a couple of times, he made a beeline for me.

  “John Handful?  My name is Detective Inspector Peter Draw.” 

  I shook his pre-offered hand, and he stood over me, leaning on the bannister.  “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  I nodded.

  “I understand you were ordered off the case by DI Silver.”

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “The Detective Inspector wanted me to take a look around see if I could find any indication where the suspect went.”

  “That would be Cowan Carter?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where were you when DI Silver was attacked?”

  “I was upstairs in the attic room.”

  “And did you find anything?”

  “Only that Isabella Carter has photographs of me plastered all over the wall.”

  He smiled.  “I bet you’re flattered.”

  “Hardly, she’s blind.”

  He ran a hand through his silver beard.  “And while you were upstairs, you heard nothing?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “And you expect me to believe that?”  He spoke softly, but he was angry.  His words were clipped and sharp, the muscles in his face set like concrete.

  “Do you think I’m lying?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Paul Silver was my friend.”

  “Who had kicked you off a high-profile case, without much hope of your consultancy being renewed?”

  “Friends can disagree sometimes but still be friends.”

  We stared at each other in silence for a moment, then draw reached inside his jacket pocket and took out a notebook and pen.  He flipped through some pages.  “Your statement says you have no idea why DI Silver had such a sudden change of heart and asked you back on the case.  That right?”

  “Yes.”

  “He didn’t say?”

  “No.”

  “So, DI Silver snapped his fingers, and you just came running?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And you never questioned him about it?”

  “No.”

  “Why on earth not?  You’re the great consulting private detective who never gets anything wrong.  You’ve so much experience at catching the bad guys.  Maybe we should be wheeling you out at police training days.  Hell, maybe you should be in charge!”

  In the living room, the forensic team all looked up.  Draw glanced at them, and they went back to their tasks.

  “Look,” I said, keeping my voice even.  “I don’t expect you to like me.  I accept that the police will always view me with suspicion, despite the help I have given them over the last few years. There’s nothing I can do about that.  If I cared about what people thought, I’d never solve a single case.  You, as much as anyone, must know that.”  A brief smile formed on his face, as if there was some resonance to what I was saying.  “I just want to find out where Cowan Carter is.  That’s what I intend to do.  That’s what I want to do.  ‘Buster’ Bill, Sabrina Muller and Paul Silver, deserve nothing less.”