The Mill on the Shore (20 page)

‘Weren’t you invited?’

She shook her head. ‘They don’t bother any more. They know I’ll not go.’

She stood aside to let him in. She was not surprised to see him. It was almost as if she were expecting it. He took off his boots and shook the snow from his waterproof jacket.

‘We need a drink,’ she said in a voice that allowed no contradiction. ‘Something to fend off the cold. What will you have, George? Whisky?’

He nodded.

‘To what do we owe the pleasure then, George?’ she said in a hard, tight voice. ‘You didn’t come out on a night like this because you felt like some fresh air. Or perhaps that’s it. Perhaps you’re finding the Happy Families atmosphere at the Mill a bit stifling.’

‘I was hoping to speak to Phil,’ he said.

‘Well, as you see he’s not here.’

She poured two large glasses of whisky and carried them through to the living room. She sat on the stool in front of the knitting machine but with her back to it so she was facing him. He settled into a low armchair and felt immediately at a disadvantage.

‘Aren’t you going to ask any questions?’ she said. ‘That’s not like you.’

‘It’s probably not important,’ he said. ‘As I said, I wanted to talk to Phil. He keeps records of his bird counts?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. She nodded to a shelf where a pile of notebooks were neatly stacked. ‘Help yourself, George.’

‘I wanted to talk to him about swans,’ he said. ‘To know if he’d noticed any decline in the mute swan population over the years.’

Again he thought she was not surprised by the question.

‘You’ll have to ask him,’ she said without interest.

‘The young Morrissey lad found a dying swan on the shore this morning. It seemed to have lost the waterproofing on its feathers. Ruth said there’d been a similar incident when she was staying here with Hannah, the summer of ’ 91. I wondered if it happened very often.’

She did not ask him why he wanted to know and he thought that was more suspicious than her earlier aggression. She shrugged.

‘It happens occasionally,’ she said. ‘ The mute swans gather in big numbers up the Marr near the town bridge. The river’s more polluted there though it’s still tidal. I think cooking oil’s usually the culprit. Restaurants flush the oil down their drains.’

‘And it would be enough to kill a swan like that?’

‘Not by itself apparently. It leaves them without proper waterproofing then they lose weight because they can’t feed properly. And that lowers their resistance to disease …’

It was all too much like a prepared speech for him to be quite convinced.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘The NRA took a fish-and-chip shop to court a few years ago. If you’re interested there must be some record of it.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose there must.’ Still she had not asked him what the questions were all about.

‘What about Mardon Wools?’ he asked, hoping to shock her into a reaction.

‘What about them?’ Her voice was easy and controlled, even slightly amused.

‘The company’s never been prosecuted for polluting the river?’

‘Of course not.’ She gave a short mocking laugh. ‘With Phil involved?’ She looked outside. The flakes were falling more slowly. ‘He’s pure as the driven snow.’

There was a silence. George felt as if he had shown his hand too early and been beaten. She sensed too that she had won and pushed home her advantage.

‘If that’s all, George, I’d like to get back to this knitting. It’s a new venture for me designing for home machines.’

‘Yes,’ he said. He drank the last of the whisky and stood up. ‘ I think that’s all. For now.’

She led him out to the kitchen and watched him pull on his boots. At the door he stopped and looked back at her.

‘Nick Lineham,’ he said. ‘ Does the name mean anything to you?’

She shook her head. ‘Never heard of him,’ she said.

‘Phil’s never mentioned him?’

‘I’m sure he hasn’t.’

He pulled on his jacket and went outside, convinced that she was lying. It was impossible that she could have retained all that information about sick swans and not remembered the name of the conservation officer who must have worked on some of the cases. But what did it all mean? And was it relevant, anyway, to Jimmy’s death?

Outside the snow stopped suddenly and a pale moon appeared through the clouds. George remembered his own children’s excitement at the arrival of snow. It was one of the few clear memories of their childhood he had. He had always been busy, concerned with other things. They had been there in the back ground but not really a part of his life. Weekends had been for birding and for catching up with paperwork from the office. He had acted, he supposed, much like Jimmy Morrissey, who was now being made out to be such a monster. George, like Jimmy, had taken it for granted that that was how things were. He had no excuse for his blindness.

The time he remembered the snow had been too thick for him to get to the office and the children had been sent home from school. It had started snowing the day before and during the evening they had rushed out every half hour into the darkness with a ruler to measure how deep it was. The next day they had built snowmen and he had pulled them round the garden on a sledge. Had he felt then that he was missing out? he wondered. Probably not. But he could appreciate how disappointed Tim Morrissey would be that the snow had stopped. He imagined him looking out of his bedroom window, willing the clouds to gather and the moon to disappear.

Because there was a moon George decided to walk back to the Mill along the shore. It was quicker and he was already very cold. Old age, he supposed, creeping up on him. So when the cottage door was shut behind him he walked back through the garden past the charred remains of Cathy Cairns’ bonfire down the steps in the rock to the beach. His eyes were soon accustomed to the pale moonlight. It was reflected on the water. The tide was past the turn and there was still a sprinkling of snow on the shingle furthest away from the sea. It was not such a bad place, he thought, for Jimmy Morrissey to have ended his days.

He walked briskly, hoping the movement would bring some feeling back into his feet, keeping his eyes on the ground just ahead of him so he would not trip on loose shingle or a boulder. He stopped for a moment to get his bearings and catch his breath, to make sure that he was taking the shortest route to the Mill. At the high-water mark he saw a pile of rubbish, a pale shape caught in the moonlight. He thought it might be another swan and he went to investigate. But as he approached he saw that it was too big to be a swan. It was Aidan Moore, drowned, and washed up by the tide.

The police came with a portable generator and spotlights, though it seemed to George that the Inspector in charge was just going through the motions. He seemed to find nothing sinister in Aidan Moore’s death. It was happening all the time, he said with indecent enthusiasm. Though you wouldn’t normally expect the corpse to float as quickly as that. He looked at Aidan Moore’s body with something approaching disappointment, as if he were sorry it was not more decayed. George thought he was the sort who took delight in watching a young constable vomiting over a particularly unpleasant body. It would show how tough he was.

‘This looks fresh enough,’ the Inspector said. ‘Not like the one we had last summer. He’d been in the drink for weeks. That was some moron mucking around on a glorified lilo and thinking he was Francis Chichester. Perhaps this poor sod never got carried out into the open sea.’

‘It should look fresh enough,’ George said tartly. ‘Mr Moore was still alive yesterday morning.’

‘Mr Moore,’ the policeman said. ‘Staying at the Mill, was he?’ He led George away from the body, and even that small exertion caused him to breathe heavily. He was nearing retirement, running to fat, with a smoker’s wheeze. His name was Porter. George had taken an instant dislike to him. He was too cocky, too full of himself.

‘Yes,’ George said. ‘He was a lecturer. He taught the course on illustration.’

‘Of course!’ Porter said. ‘I should have recognized him. I talked to him after Mr Morrissey committed suicide. He was a nervy sort of chap.’

‘You’re not suggesting that he committed suicide too!’ George was provoked to sarcasm.

‘I’m not suggesting anything.’ Porter grinned showing gold-filled molars and fang-like canines. ‘Keep an open mind. That’s what we’re told in those Home Office guidelines that land on my desk every five minutes. But I’d bet you anything that this was an accident.’

He stamped his feet and thrust his hands into the pockets of his sheepskin jacket. George thought, with a touch of snobbishness, that there was something of the used car salesman about him. He was flash, quick and not entirely reliable. An open mind was the last thing he possessed.

George, who had drafted many of the Home Office guidelines of which Porter complained, spoke slowly. ‘You don’t think it’s more than a coincidence – two sudden deaths in a month?’ And shouldn’t you be treating it more seriously? he thought. I found the body but you haven’t even asked my name.

Porter did not answer directly.

‘You must be Palmer-Jones,’ he said, speaking casually but watching George with the look of a conjurer who has just pulled the rabbit from the hat ‘I’d heard you were around. I was going to get in touch anyway to see if you fancied talking to our Rotary Club. This month’s speaker’s dropped out. “My Life as a Private Eye”, something like that. They wouldn’t be interested in the Home Office stuff.’

He obviously wanted to show off how much he knew about George but still the suggestion seemed entirely serious. George looked at him in horror. Porter appeared not to notice.

‘Think about it,’ he said genially. ‘You don’t have to let me know now. There’ll be a tenner in it and a fancy lunch.’

‘How did you know I was here?’ George asked. The scene was slipping into the surreal and he needed something to hold on to.

‘Hm?’ The policeman’s attention had been caught by a group of uniformed officers who slithered over the shingle, carrying canvas screens to shield the body. ‘ Daft buggers. What do they want to bother with that for? By the time it gets light enough for any nosy parker to see the tide’ll be in again and we’ll have to move the poor sod anyway. It’s a lot of fuss about nothing. I told the governor it would be an accidental death and we wouldn’t need all that palaver.’ He turned back to George. ‘What did you say?’

‘I asked how you knew I was here.’

‘Oh.’ Porter could tell that George was impressed and wanted to make the most of the story. ‘It’s a small place, Mardon. There’s not much goes on that we don’t hear about. We don’t need a pile of paper sent from the Home Office to tell
us
about community policing. You and your good lady are staying at the Mill because Mrs Morrissey doesn’t want to believe that her old man committed suicide. That’s all right by me. We had a full coroner’s inquest but you can ignore the verdict if you like. I’m a believer in private enterprise. How can they expect anyone to survive on a pension these days? I might take up the same line when I retire. Perhaps a bit more up-market. If I were you I think I’d call myself a security consultant. You’ve got to think of image these days. Make much of a living at it, do you?’

The sudden question was meant to offend. George ignored it and made an effort to keep his voice even.

‘That’s very impressive,’ he said. ‘All the same I’d like to know how you found out we were here.’

‘That’s easy.’ Like a child playing a game the detective had lost interest in the teasing. ‘My wife’s a local girl. Born and reared in Markham Law. Her aunty’s Florrie Duffy who does the cleaning at the Mill. She helps out those two lasses who do all the work in the place. She heard you were coming. Probably knew before you did. She’s that sort. I thought I recognized your name from all those bloody circulars so I looked you up, made a few enquiries.’

He stamped his feet again. ‘ I don’t know about you,’ he said, ‘but I’m bloody freezing.’ George saw that he was wearing polished leather slip-on shoes, quite unsuitable for the shore. ‘I think I can leave this to the troops now. It’s time to get home to a hot toddy and my bed. The wife’ll be wondering what I’m up to.’ He grinned lewdly. ‘I’ll probably see you in the morning. I’ll be in then to tie in all the details.’

‘Don’t you want to see Aidan Moore’s room?’ George asked in disbelief. ‘Or talk to the other residents?’

‘Why would I want to do that?’ The cheery good humour disappeared quite suddenly. ‘I’ve told you. As far as I’m concerned this was an accidental death. The chap wasn’t a local. He couldn’t be expected to know the tides. It’s a treacherous bit of coast, especially if you go wandering about after dark. He probably tripped on a slippery rock and knocked himself out. Then the tide came in and drowned him. Or he might have gone out to Salter’s Spit and not left himself time to get back before high water. It’s not the first time it’s happened and it’ll not be the last.’

‘But there’s that cut on the side of his forehead.’

‘Of course there is!’ Porter made it clear he was losing patience. He knew what he thought of civil servants who’d never done a day’s practical policing in their lives but tried to tell the men what to do. ‘He’d been in the water for twenty-four hours in a strong tide, then washed up on a rocky beach. What would you expect?’

‘There are things you should know,’ George persisted. He could not believe that the man was taking it so lightly. Porter seemed not to hear him. He yelled something incomprehensible to his subordinates and began to march purposefully over the shingle. George was put in the ridiculous position of having to follow, scrambling to keep up. The detective ran out of breath before he did and he stopped, still on the beach, wheezing painfully.

‘My investigation has thrown up a number of inconsistencies,’ George said. ‘Facts which make me believe that Jimmy Morrissey was murdered.’

The policeman turned crossly still struggling for breath. ‘I suppose you’ve passed on these facts to the police,’ he snapped.

‘No,’ George said defensively. ‘Not yet. I wasn’t sure …’

‘Well wait until you’re bloody sure then,’ Porter interrupted, ‘before you bother me with them.’ He stared furiously at George and continued quietly: ‘Look, Mr Palmer-Jones, I don’t mind you playing at policeman. We’ve all got to have a hobby in our old age. I don’t even mind you ripping off a daft old widow who’s got more money than sense. But I do mind you coming along and telling me that I don’t do my job properly. I enquired into Mr Morrissey’s death. With an open mind. He committed suicide. I will enquire into Mr Moore’s death. But unless the post mortem shows that he died from anything other than drowning I’m telling you now that it’ll go down as an accident!’