The Running Grave, page 51
When he rapped on the door using a knocker shaped like a horseshoe, a dog started yapping furiously from the interior. The door was opened by a woman in her early sixties, whose platinum hair was cut short and whose skin was the colour and texture of old leather. The dog, which was tiny, fluffy and white, was clutched to her sizeable bosom. For a split second, Strike thought he must have come to the wrong house, because gales of laughter issued from behind her, audible even over the still-yapping dog.
‘Got friends over,’ she said, beaming. ‘They wanted to meet you. Averyone’s excited.’
You have to be kidding me.
‘I take it you’re—?’
‘Shelley Heaton,’ she said, extending a hand, on which a heavy gold charm bracelet tinkled. ‘Come on in. Len’s through there with the rest of ’em. Do you shet up, Dilly.’
The dog’s yapping subsided. Shelley led Strike down a dark hallway and left into a comfortable but not over-large sitting room, which seemed to be full of people. Hazy shadows of holiday-makers drifted to and fro behind the net curtains: as Strike had expected, the noise from the street was constant.
‘Thass Len,’ said Shelley, pointing at a large, ruddy-faced man with the most obvious comb-over Strike had seen in years. Leonard Heaton’s right leg, which was encased in a surgical boot, was resting on a squat pouffe. The table beside him was crammed with framed photographs, many of them featuring the dog in Shelley’s arms.
‘Hare he is,’ said Len Heaton loudly, offering a sweaty paw embellished with a large signet ring. ‘Cameron Strike, I presume?’
‘That’s me,’ said Strike, shaking hands.
‘I’ll juss make the tea,’ said Shelley, looking hungrily at Strike. ‘Don’t go starting without me!’
She set down the small dog and left with a jangle of jewellery. The dog trotted after her.
‘This is our friends George and Gillian Cox,’ said Leonard Heaton, pointing at the sofa, where three plump people, also in their sixties, were tightly wedged, ‘and thass Suzy, Shell’s sister.’
Suzy’s eager eyes looked like raisins in her doughy face. George, whose paunch rested almost on his knees, was entirely bald and wheezing slightly, even though he was stationary. Gillian, who had curly grey hair and wore silver spectacles, said proudly,
‘I’m the one you spoke to, on the phone.’
‘Do you set down,’ Heaton told Strike comfortably, pointing at the armchair with its back to the window, facing his own. ‘Happy about the referendum?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Strike, who judged from Len Heaton’s expression that this was the correct answer.
During the few minutes Heaton’s wife moved in and out of the kitchen carrying tea, cups, plates and lemon drizzle cake, regularly crying ‘Wait fur me, I wanna hear it all!’, Strike had ample time to realise that the three blondes who’d cornered him at his godson’s christening had been mere amateurs in nosiness. The sofa-dwellers bombarded him with questions, not only about all his most newsworthy cases, but also about his parentage, his missing half leg and even – here, his determined good nature nearly failed – his relationship with Charlotte Campbell.
‘That was a long time ago,’ he said as firmly as was compatible with politeness, before turning to Leonard Heaton. ‘So you’re just back from Spain?’
‘Ah, thass right,’ said Leonard, whose forehead was peeling. ‘Got ourselves a little place in Fuengirola ahter I sowd my business. We’re normally there November through to April, but—’
‘He broke his bloody leg,’ said Shelley, finally sitting down on a chair beside her husband, perching the tiny white dog on her knee and looking greedily at Strike.
‘Liss of the “bloody”, you,’ said Leonard, smirking. He had the air of a joker used to commanding the room, but he didn’t seem to resent Strike’s temporary hogging of centre stage, perhaps because he and his wife were enjoying playing the role of impresarios who’d brought this impressive exhibit for their friends’ amusement.
‘Tell him what you was up to whan you broke it,’ Shelley instructed her husband.
‘Thass neither hare nor there,’ said a smirking Leonard, clearly wanting to be prompted.
‘Go on, Leonard, tell him,’ said Gillian, giggling.
‘I’ll tell’m, then,’ said Shelley. ‘Minigolf.’
‘Really?’ said Strike, smiling politely.
‘Bloody minigolf!’ said Shelley. ‘I said to him, “How the hell d’you manage to break a leg doing minigolf?”’
‘Tripped,’ said Leonard.
‘Pissed,’ said Shelley, and the audience on the sofa chortled more loudly.
‘Do you shet up, woman,’ said Leonard, archly innocent. ‘Tripped. Could’ve happened to anyone.’
‘Funny how it olluz happens to you,’ said Shelley.
‘They’re olluz like this!’ the giggling Gillian told Strike, inviting him to enjoy the Heatons’ madcap humour. ‘They never stop!’
‘We stayed out in Fuengirola till he could walk better,’ said Shelley. ‘He didn’t fancy the plane and tryina manage the steps down the esplanade at home. We had to miss out on a couple of summer bookings, but thass the price you pay for marrying a man who breaks his leg tryina git a golf ball into a clown’s mouth.’
The trio on the sofa roared with laughter, darting eager looks at Strike to see whether he was suitably entertained, and Strike continued to smile as sincerely as he could manage while drawing out his notebook and pen, at which a silence tingling with excitement fell over the room. Far from dampening anyone’s spirits, the prospect of raking back over the accidental death of a child seemed to be having a stimulating effect on all present.
‘Well, it’s very good of you to agree to see me,’ Strike told the Heatons. ‘As I said, I’m really just after an eyewitness account of what happened that day on the beach. It’s a long time ago now, I know, but—’
‘Well, we were up right arly,’ said Shelley eagerly.
‘Ah, crack of dawn,’ said Leonard.
‘Before dawn,’ Shelley corrected him. ‘Still dark.’
‘We were s’pposed to be driving up to Leicester—’
‘Fur me auntie’s funeral,’ interjected Shelley.
‘You can’t leave a Maltese,’ said Leonard. ‘They do howl the place down if you leave ’em, so we needed t’ampty har before we got in the car. You’re not s’posed to take dogs down on the beach in th’oliday season—’
‘But Betty was like Dilly, she wus only tiny, and we always pick up,’ said Shelley comfortably. After a split second’s confusion, Strike realised she was referring to dog shit.
‘So we took har along the beach, just out there,’ said Leonard, pointing left. ‘And the gal come a-runnin’ out of the dark, screaming.’
‘Give me a hell of a tann,’ said Shelley.
‘We thowt she’d had a sex attack or something,’ said Leonard, not without a certain relish.
‘Can you remember what she said?’
‘“Hilp me, hilp me, she’s gone under” sorta thing,’ said Leonard.
‘“I thenk she’s drowned”,’ said Shelley.
‘We thowt she meant a dog. Who goes swimming, five a.m. in the North Sea? She wus in her undies. Soaking wet,’ said Leonard with a smirk and a waggle of his eyebrows. Shelley cuffed her husband with the back of her ringed hand.
‘Behave yoursalf,’ said Shelley, smirking at Strike, while the sofa-sitters snorted with renewed laughter.
‘She wasn’t in a swimsuit?’
‘Undies,’ repeated Leonard, smirking. ‘Freezing cold.’
Shelley cuffed him again while the sofa-sitters laughed.
‘I thowt at fust she’d stripped off to go in ahter the dog,’ said Shelley. ‘Navver dreamed she’d been swimming.’
‘And she said, “Help me, she’s gone under”?’ asked Strike.
‘Ah, something like that,’ said Leonard. ‘Than she says, “We wus over hare” and goes running off to—’
‘No, she navver,’ said Shelley. ‘She asked us to git the coastguard fust.’
‘No, she navver,’ said Leonard. ‘She showed us the stuff fust.’
‘No, she navver,’ said Shelley, ‘she said, “Git the coastguard, git the coastguard.”’
‘’Ow come I seen the stuff, then?’
‘You seen the stuff ahter you come back, you dozy foal,’ said Shelley, to further chuckles from the sofa.
‘What stuff was this?’ Strike asked.
‘Towels and clothes – the little gal’s driss and shoes,’ said Shelley. ‘She took me over to tham, and whan I seen the shoes, I realised it was a kid. Orful,’ she said, but her tone was matter-of-fact. Strike could tell that the drowning had receded into the distant past for the Heatons. Such shock as it might have caused them two decades ago had long since subsided.
‘I come along with yarsalves,’ said Leonard stubbornly. ‘I warn’t gonna call up the coastguard fur a dog. I wus there, I seen the shoes—’
‘All right, Leonard, you wus with us, ha’it your own way,’ said Shelley, rolling her eyes.
‘So then I go to phone the coastguard,’ said Leonard, satisfied.
‘And you stayed with Cherie, Mrs Heaton?’
‘Ah, and I said to har, “The hell was you doing in the water, this hour of the morning?”’
‘And what did she say?’ asked Strike.
‘Said the little gal wanted a paddle.’
‘I said to Shelley ahter,’ interjected Leonard, ‘“thass what the word “no”’s for. We see kids like that hare avery summer, spoiled as hell. We navver had any ourselves—’
‘How’m I supposed to manage kids? I’ve got my hands full with you, breaking your bloody legs playing minigolf,’ said Shelley, drawing more giggles from the sofa. ‘I should tell you no more often.’
‘You tell me no plenny, thass why we ha’n’t got kids,’ said Leonard, which provoked shrieks of laughter from George, Gillian and Suzy and another cuff from his smirking wife.
‘Did Cherie tell you what had happened in the sea?’ Strike asked Shelley patiently.
‘Ah, she said the little gal went too deep and went under, said she tried to reach har and couldn’t, so she swum back to shore. Than she seen us and come a-running.’
‘And how did Cherie seem to you? Upset?’
‘More scared’n upset, I thowt,’ said Shelley.
‘Shell din’t like har,’ said Leonard.
‘He liked har, ’cause he was gitting an arly morning eyeful,’ said Shelley, while the chorus on the sofa chuckled. ‘She said to me, “I nearly drowned mysalf, the current’s right strong.” Looking fur sympathy for harsalf, and thar’s a kid dead.’
‘You’ve olluz been hard on—’
‘I weren’t the one with the hard on, Len,’ said Shelley.
The trio on the sofa shrieked with scandalised laughter, and both Heatons threw a triumphant glance at Strike, as if to say they doubted he’d ever been entertained like this during an investigation. The detective’s jaw was starting to ache with all the fake smiling he was having to do.
‘An’ she giggled and all,’ Shelley told Strike, over the others’ laughter. ‘I said to har, put your clothes back on, no point standing there like that. “Oh yeah,” she said, an’ she giggled.’
‘Narves,’ said Leonard. ‘Shock.’
‘You warn’t there whan that happened,’ said Shelley. ‘You wus phoning.’
‘You didn’t think she was genuinely upset Daiyu had drowned, Mrs Heaton?’ Strike asked.
‘Well, she wus crying a bit, but if it’d been me—’
‘You took agin har,’ Leonard told Shelley.
‘She bent down to Betty and fussed har,’ said Shelley. ‘Whass she doing playing with a dog whan there’s a little gal drowning?’
‘Shock,’ said Leonard staunchly.
‘How long were you away, Mr Heaton?’ asked Strike.
‘Twenny minutes? Haaf hour?’
‘And how quickly did the coastguard get out?’
‘They wus out there not long ahter I got back to the beach,’ said Leonard. ‘We seen the boat going out, seen the lights, and the police wus on the beach not long ahter that.’
‘She was bloody scared whan the police got there,’ said Shelley.
‘Natural,’ said Leonard.
‘She run awff,’ said Shelley.
‘She navver,’ scoffed Leonard.
‘She did,’ said Shelley. ‘“Whass that over there?” She went tanking off to see something along the beach. Pebbles or weed or something. Sun wus just coming up by then. It wus an excuse,’ said Shelley. ‘She wanted to look busy whan they arrived, poking around in the weed.’
‘Thass not running awff,’ said Leonard.
‘Lump of seaweed, a seven-year-old gal? She wus playing up fur the police. “Look at me trying averything t’find har.” No, I din’t like har,’ Shelley told Strike unnecessarily. ‘Irresponsible, warn’t she? It wus har fault.’
‘What happened when the police arrived, can you remember?’ asked Strike.
‘They asked how she and the little gal got there, ’cause she warn’t local,’ said Shelley.
‘She took us up to the scrappy owd truck with dirt and straw all over it, in the car park,’ said Leonard. ‘Said they wus from that farm, that church place full of weirdos, up Aylmerton way.’
‘You already knew about the Universal Humanitarian Church, did you?’ asked Strike.
‘Friends of aars in Felbrigg, they’d towd us about the place,’ said Shelley.
‘Weirdos,’ repeated Leonard. ‘So we’re standing in the car park and the police wants us all to go t’station, to make statements. I says, “We’ve got a funeral to git to.” The gal was crying. Then owd Muriel come out the café, to see whass going on.’
‘This is Muriel Carter, who saw Cherie take Daiyu down to the beach?’
‘Know your stuff, don’tchew?’ said Shelley, as impressed by Strike’s thoroughness as Jordan Reaney had been disconcerted. ‘Ah, thass her. Used to own a café down by that bit of beach.’
‘Did you know her?’
‘We’d navver spoken to har before all this happened,’ said Shelley, ‘but we knew her ahter that. She told the police she’d seen Cherie carrying the little gal out the truck and off down the beach. She thowt it was stupid, that time in the morning, seeing Cherie with towels and that.’
‘Muriel was in her café very early,’ commented Strike. ‘This must have all been – what, five in the morning?’
‘Coffee machine wus on the blink,’ said Leonard. ‘She’n har husband wus in there tryina fix it before opening time.’
‘Ah, right,’ said Strike, making a note.
‘Muriel said the kid wus sleepy,’ said Shelley. ‘I said to Leonard ahter, “So she warn’t pestering har for a paddle, then, thass just an excuse.” I thenk it wus Cherie who wanted to go swimming, not the little gal.’
‘Do you give it a rest, woman,’ said Leonard before saying to Strike, ‘Th’only reason Muriel thowt the kid wus sleepy wus ’cause Cherie was carrying har. Kids like being carried, that don’t mean nothen.’
‘Wut about wut come out at the inquest?’ Shelley asked Leonard sharply. ‘About har swimming? Tell’m.’ But before Leonard could do so, Shelley said,
‘Cherie wus a champion swimmer. She said it at the inquest, in the dock.’
‘Champion,’ said Leonard, with an eye roll, ‘she warn’t a champion, she wus juss good at it whan she wus a kid.’
‘She wus on a team,’ said Shelley, still speaking to Strike. ‘She’d won medals.’
‘So?’ said Leonard. ‘Thass not a bloody crime.’
‘If I wus a bloody champion swimmer I’d’ve stayed out thar to halp the little gal, not gawn back to the beach,’ said Shelley firmly, to a murmur of agreement from the sofa.
‘Don’t matter how many medals you’ve got, a rip tide’s a rip tide,’ said Leonard, now looking disgruntled.
‘This is interesting,’ said Strike, and Shelley looked excited. ‘How did the subject of Cherie’s swimming come up at the inquest, can you remember?’
‘Ah, I can,’ said Shelley, ‘because she wus tryin’ to make out it wusn’t irresponsible, takin’ the little gal into the sea, because she wus a strong swimmer harself. I said to Len after, “Medals make you see in the dark, do they?” “Medals make it ollright to take a little gal who can’t swim into the North Sea, do they?”’
‘So it was established at the inquest that Daiyu couldn’t swim, was it?’
‘Ah,’ said Leonard. ‘Har mother said she’d navver larned.’
‘I didn’t take to that mother,’ said Shelley. ‘Looked like a witch.’
‘Wearin’ robes, Shell, warn’t she?’ piped up Suzy from the sofa.
‘Long black robes,’ said Shelley, nodding. ‘You’d thenk, ef you were going to court, you’d put on proper clothes. Juss respectful.’
‘Iss their religion,’ said Leonard, forgetting that he’d just described the church members as weirdos. ‘You carn’t stop people following thar religion.’
‘Ef you ask me, Cherie wus the one who wanted the swim,’ Shelley told Strike, disregarding her husband’s interjection. ‘The kid was sleepy, she warn’t asking to go. It was Cherie’s idea.’
‘You don’t know that,’ said Leonard.
‘Navver said I knew it,’ said Shelley loftily. ‘Suspected.’
‘Can you remember any details Cherie gave about her swimming career?’ asked Strike. ‘The name of a club? Where she trained? I’m trying to trace Cherie and if I could find old teammates, or a coach—’
‘Hang on,’ said Leonard, perking up.
‘What?’ said Shelley.
‘I might be able to ’elp thar.’
‘’Ow?’ said Shelley sceptically.
‘’Cause after court, I spoke to har. She wus crying outside. One of the little gal’s family had just been talking to har – havin’ a go, probably. He walked off quick enough when I gone over to har,’ said Leonard, with a slight swelling of the chest. ‘I felt sorry fur har, an’ I towd her, “I know you done averything you could, love.” You warn’t thar, you wus in the bog,’ said Leonard, forestalling Shelley. ‘She said to me, crying, like, “But I could’ve stopped it”, and—’
