Siren Song, page 3
Fowler himself had last been on the yacht the previous September. He and Helen and several others had sailed to Spurn Point, anchored in the Trinity Channel, and had then sailed back to Hull as it grew dark. He said it had been a happy occasion for the pair of them. When asked why he used the yacht so infrequently, Fowler said he had bought it from a friend – a hint of a favour, of helping someone out – and that he had never had a passion for the water. He had owned it for two years and had sailed it on fewer than a dozen occasions, and always accompanied by someone more accomplished than himself.
He continued to insist that he had no idea who had been with Helen on that ‘fatal day’. She had even made a point of refusing to tell him who had gone with her, he said. Perhaps she wanted to make him jealous following her accusations that he was working too hard and neglecting her. He repeated how much he had loved her, and when he was asked about their future together, he had been unable to answer.
Helen Brooks’s death joined a long list of drownings. It was a river. It was what happened there. It was what happened to people who went out on it with no real idea of what they were doing. Experienced sailors who had sailed on every ocean in the world drowned there. Small boats survived the fiercest storms; tankers collided with others, visible from twenty miles away, on the calmest of seas.
The sea was a different world, and different laws and procedures operated. What might be considered straightforward and simple on land became complicated and eventful on the sea. There was a sense of the commonplace in these reversals; a sense, based on that unquestioned inevitability, of acceptance. People drowned because they were out of their element or their depth.
It was this simple understanding that Alison Brooks was unable to accept. Perhaps the sea was too big a thing to blame for her daughter’s death.
The clippings ended only a few days after the incident. If I wanted to know what had happened after that then I would have to visit Sunny at the news agency. It was something I had hoped to avoid, but which I now realized had been inevitable from the start with a case already so rooted in the past and in the manner of its revelation.
I called Alison Brooks and told her I’d finished reading. She was already at the hospital and waiting to see the doctor. I wished her luck, and she asked me immediately if I was prepared to help her. I repeated what I’d told her earlier – that there was little possibility of changing the verdict of the inquest – and that if this was what she secretly hoped, then it was pointless for me to even begin.
I heard a nearby loudspeaker announcement, the noise of people around her. She remained silent for a few seconds before saying that she’d appreciate anything more that I might be able to discover for her.
‘Do you believe everything Peter Nicholson told the reporters?’ I said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘And before you say it, yes, fifteen months is a long time to go on banging your head against a brick wall.’
I heard another voice close by.
‘I have to go,’ she said.
I waited until the line was dead before saying ‘Good luck’.
I returned the clippings to their envelope, folded it and put it in my pocket.
4
I WALKED TO Spring Bank, where Sunny and Yvonne ran their news agency. I’d seen Yvonne several times recently, but had not spoken to Sunny for almost two months, and then we’d met by chance, in a city-centre bar, surrounded by others. We were awkward with each other, and we both regretted that, but the bar was no place to talk properly. We’d agreed to contact each other, but the weeks had passed and neither of us had made the effort.
Six months earlier I’d accused him of using one of my clients and my own investigation as a means of acquiring valuable copy concerning the appeal and subsequent murder of a convicted murderer. In truth, we’d been using each other, but my own accusation had been the first and the most forcibly made and I had given him no opportunity to counter it.
I knew from Yvonne that he regretted this rift between us as much as I did.
Traffic queued along Ferensway and at the Beverley Road junction, making the already hazy air even hazier with its fumes.
Arriving at the doorway leading to the fire-escape which led to the agency, I retraced my steps into the nearby off-licence and bought a bottle of malt whisky.
I went back through the doorway, along the alleyway and up the stairs. The intercom at the door was broken. It was impossible to climb the stairs silently. Half way up, the door opened above me and Yvonne came out onto the metal platform there.
She watched me without speaking for a moment. Beside me, the handrail was hot to the touch.
I heard Sunny behind her, asking her who it was.
‘Not sure,’ she said. ‘It’s either Mohammed or the mountain.’ She flicked the cigarette she held into the debris of the yard beneath us and held out her arms to me. I went up the stairs and put my own round her, holding the bottle into the small of her back.
‘You’re either really pleased to see me,’ she said. ‘Or you’ve brought a bottle of expensive whisky as a pathetic and, frankly, unnecessary peace offering for that ungrateful, deceitful, lying and manipulative bastard in there.’ She shouted this last part so that Sunny would miss none of it.
In my ear, she whispered, ‘He’s off again tomorrow and not taking me with him after he’d promised.’
‘Where?’ I said.
‘Scunthorpe,’ she said. The name always sounded like an admission of defeat of some sort. ‘Advertorial for a motel chain.’
‘“Advertorial”?’
‘Try and keep up,’ she told me, her arms still around me.
‘If I were free, I’d take you away somewhere even more exciting,’ I said.
‘“Free” as in . . .?’ She released me and held me by the shoulders. ‘Anywhere would be exciting with you,’ she said.
‘You’re just guessing.’
‘It’s what I’m good at. Guessing what other people are doing and thinking and then having to do everything they should be doing, but aren’t, because they’re off doing something they shouldn’t be doing.’ She was shouting again.
Sunny appeared on the fire-escape behind her. He wore an orange shirt, and shorts. There were parrots and Hawaiian dancers on the shirt. They appeared to be holding small guitars. Flowers covered their nipples.
Yvonne stood to one side. ‘Well, if it isn’t the lying, cheating, deceitful bastard himself. We were just talking about you.’
‘You missed out manipulative,’ he said. He looked past her to me.
I knew the conference in Scunthorpe was something he could not afford to ignore. The agency also acted as a broker for advertising firms, and advertisers and their customers always appreciated appreciative copy and news items.
‘Scunthorpe?’ I said to him.
‘It’s the summer,’ he said. ‘You want any real news in this neck of the woods you’re probably looking at Doncaster or Goole.’
‘Things bad?’ I said.
‘“Slow” is probably a better word,’ he said. He held out his hand to me and I clasped it for a moment. He let go of me and I gave him the whisky.
‘Careful with these shows of affection, boys,’ Yvonne said. ‘You don’t want people getting the wrong idea.’
‘Yvonne was all candles, crystals and aromatic oils twenty-five years before everyone else was all candles and crystals and aromatic oils,’ Sunny said. ‘The world catches up with her and she doesn’t like it.’
‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘You were having an argument before I arrived.’
‘You can leave that here when you go,’ Yvonne told him, pointing to the bottle. She put her hand to the side of my face. ‘It’s good to see you,’ she said. She put her arm through mine and led me into the agency.
The room looked as confusing and as cluttered as always. Computers, fax machines and photocopiers were arranged in no apparent order, and between these were mounds of newspapers and magazines, some still standing, some already toppled. Half a dozen telephones sat where they had last been used. Small fans stood on each of the two desks.
The blind had been lowered at the front of the room, but this had been prevented from falling its full length by the clutter of directories, dead plants and padded envelopes on the sill. A television sat playing but muted in the corner of the room, a stack of cellophane-wrapped cassettes piled on it.
Sunny took three plastic cups from his desk and poured us each a drink.
I tried to remember what of any consequence had happened recently, and which he might be selling on, in all its guises, to the regionals and nationals – all of them as voracious as ever for news even when nothing was happening.
‘Shark gets ill in aquarium,’ he said, holding up a sheet on his desk.
‘And I’m still “Twenty Ways With A Pineapple”,’ Yvonne said, giving me a chair and sitting beside me. ‘Don’t ask.’ She cast a cold and pointed look at Sunny.
‘Motel owners own catering companies who import pineapples,’ Sunny said. ‘Sometimes they import too many pineapples, or they’re full of giant spiders or monkey piss, and they need for people to go out and buy more of them. How many pineapples does a mother of four and living on state benefits buy in a year?’ He dropped the sheet and drained his cup.
‘What do you know about Simon Fowler?’ I asked him, and the instant I finished speaking he held up the flat of his hand and then looked over it at me with an expression on his face intended to suggest that he could not believe what I’d just said.
‘Stop right there,’ he said eventually.
‘Oh, nice one,’ Yvonne said behind me.
‘What?’ I asked her.
‘You wait six months, arrive unannounced, and then the first thing you ask us is if we know anything about Simon Fowler.’
‘Meaning you do?’
‘Oh, please,’ she said. She took the bottle from the desk and poured more into her cup.
I looked back to Sunny, who slowly turned his hand and put it over his mouth, blowing out his cheeks. Silver hairs protruded from the top of his shirt. His eyes never left mine.
‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘I don’t even know what you’re suggesting,’ I told him.
He waited until he was convinced of this before going on.
‘Simon Fowler,’ he said, adding a cold emphasis to each syllable, ‘is a jumped-up fucking developer buying up everything he can get his hands on in and around the Old Town and either developing it or hanging onto it until the city council makes its mind up what to do. Either way, he becomes a part of their considerations and makes another fortune for himself in the process.’
I expected Yvonne to add something to this, but she said nothing. When I looked at her, she simply nodded.
‘Simon Fowler either sends out threatening letters or takes out injunctions against anyone who so much as breathes a whisper of a hint that anything he might be doing is not entirely above board and done solely for the long-awaited and lasting benefit of this city and its grateful citizens,’ Sunny said.
‘Meaning he’s done it to you.’
‘Five times.’
‘And each time you’ve laughed in his face and fought against him and his wealth, power and influence to claim freedom of speech.’
‘Something like that. We sent him an apology saying it wouldn’t happen again.’
‘Until next time?’
‘To begin with he didn’t seem too concerned. The man’s a crook. All he’s interested in is empire-building and money and he doesn’t much care how he gets either.’
‘Bringers of piazzas, mocha-latte bars and patio heaters to areas of inner-city blight aren’t all necessarily crooks,’ I said.
‘He’s a crook,’ he repeated flatly. There was something solid and unavoidable about the way he said it. ‘Believe me, he’s a nasty piece of work, and if you’re involved with him – either working for him, which, God forbid, I hope is not the case – or investigating something which involves him, then I honestly think you ought to look long and hard at whatever it is you’re doing before going too much further with it. I take it you haven’t encountered him personally yet, otherwise you wouldn’t be here asking me these stupid questions.’
‘It’s true,’ Yvonne said beside me, her voice low, and all the confirmation I needed.
I told them about Alison Brooks’s visit.
Sunny knew who she was before I mentioned the death of her daughter.
‘And that’s the Simon Fowler connection?’
‘So far,’ I said.
‘We covered the drowning. The nationals were only interested for a day or so, but it ran locally for over a week. There was a bit of Additional Reportage for a few articles.’
‘Did you speak to Fowler?’
‘Once or twice. I doubt he’ll remember me. He was too busy playing the distressed and grieving boyfriend at the time.’
‘You don’t think Helen Brooks meant as much to him as he wanted people to think?’
‘Not nearly as much as he meant to her, probably.’ He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.
‘You think he only said what he said because she died?’
‘Because she died on his yacht.’
‘Even though it was an accident?’
‘That’s not what her mother believes,’ he said.
I drained my own cup.
‘I spoke to her mother a few times,’ he said. ‘I know true grief when I see it, and I know which of the two of them – her and Fowler – was suffering from it.’
‘Difficult for him, though, considering the yacht.’
‘Or awkward. I bet nobody asked him how many other girlfriends he’d got. All he ever did was cover his own back, like he always does.’
‘And the mother?’
‘She called us a few times, wanting to tell us things.’
‘Things we couldn’t put into the reports,’ Yvonne said. ‘I spoke to her myself as well. She told me things her daughter had allegedly told her.’
‘Things about Fowler?’
‘Among others. Things the daughter seemed excited to be a part of. When I suggested to the mother that she was making unfounded accusations, she became angry and told me I was just like all the rest.’
‘The truth is,’ Sunny said, ‘the daughter was in over her head and probably knew next to nothing about Fowler, his deals and all his little friends.’
‘Was no one able to confront him with any of Alison Brooks’s allegations?’ I said.
‘Why should they?’ Yvonne said. ‘In all probability they had nothing whatsoever to do with the circumstances of the girl’s death. That’s all anyone was ever interested in then.’
I turned back to Sunny. ‘So you think Helen Brooks’s death and her involvement with Fowler were entirely coincidental?’
He nodded. ‘However much I’d like to believe otherwise.’
I told them about Alison Brooks’s cancer.
‘I think she was still recovering from a previous course of treatment at the time,’ Yvonne said uncertainly. ‘She always seemed exhausted, easily worn out. I think I just assumed it was because of what had happened.’
I told them everything she’d told me, and nothing I told them surprised them.
‘She’s just repeating the same old accusations,’ Sunny said when I’d finished. ‘But now, perhaps, there’s another ending in sight.’
The remark was not intended to sound uncaring, merely another explanation of why the woman was unable to relax her grip on those past events.
‘There was another daughter, much older,’ Yvonne said. ‘I met her once or twice, with her mother at the inquest.’
‘Did she share her mother’s conviction concerning Fowler?’ I said.
‘I don’t remember. I expect she did, or at least in her mother’s company she did. They used to sit together in front of the cameras. She always had her arm around her mother.’
‘Did you ever see them with Simon Fowler, at the same press conferences, for instance, or at the inquest together?’
She thought about it. ‘I honestly can’t remember. I doubt they’d want anything to do with him.’
‘What I do remember,’ Sunny said, ‘is how all of Fowler’s evidence of the day in question, all his little recordings and meetings, all his acquaintances and people waiting to see him – how all of them seemed to take him from minute to minute through the day once he’d seen the girl for the last time.’
It was something that had also occurred to me reading Alison Brooks’s file.
‘A perfect alibi?’
‘A host of perfect alibis, and all of them seemingly coincidental, each overlapping and confirming the other. But that’s never what they were, of course – alibis. It was all a terrible accident. No one was ever looking to lay any blame or responsibility at Fowler’s door.’
‘Except Helen’s mother.’
‘A woman crazed by grief and anger,’ he said.
‘And the second death? The figure on the boat who was never identified and who might even never have existed.’
‘There was no record whatsoever of the girl telling Fowler who she was taking with her.’
‘And only his word that he tried to find out.’
Sunny clicked his tongue. ‘Perhaps he really didn’t care.’
‘Or perhaps he already knew.’
‘I imagine all these things were given the proper consideration at the time,’ he said.
‘Before Fowler started sending out his injunctions?’
He shook his head in disbelief at the remark. ‘They’d been happening for years, ever since his arrival in Hull. He’s a London man and he likes everyone to know it. I don’t remember any warnings to us personally over anything we wrote concerning the death of the girl. They tended to be connected to all the stuff we published and sold regarding his developments, acquisitions and plans for rebuilding. He’s not a stupid man, and he’s careful. I imagine public sympathy and some acknowledgement of his own grief and loss were enough to shield him from Alison Brooks.’
