Dark Fires Shall Burn (21 page)

‘That's disgusting,' she'd hissed. ‘Where did you get this?'

‘I found it.'

‘Where?'

‘In the cemetery.'

‘I think it's filthy,' Nancy said.

‘Don't be such a baby.' Frances snatched it back and stuffed it in her pinafore.

Her words had the sizzle of a fire-charged poker. Nancy was ashamed of her innocence but also furiously indignant.

The rest of the tin sports two hand-rolled, filterless cigarettes; two shillings and sixpence; an empty gold locket, which Nancy fingers delicately; a man's broken pocket watch; and a little locked diary. Nancy is examining its clasp when she hears voices, muffled but raised, and she hastily swipes the diary, shoving it in the pocket of her jacket. She glances for something to take out that she could safely present as the keepsake she was commissioned to retrieve. Frances' old teddy bear, Winston, has fallen off the bed. She grasps him by a threadbare paw and opens the door. ‘I've got something!' she yells down. ‘I'm coming. Just a minute.'

She squashes the contents of the tin back in and jams the rosella lid on, almost stumbling as she climbs to put it back into the dark where she found it. No doubt Mrs Reed will get her hands on it sooner or later.

‘Oh Peggy, you can't mean that,' Kate is saying to Mrs Reed, who is busy at the grout between the kitchen tiles, down on all fours with a scourer. Nancy hovers in the doorway, staring. One didn't clean one's house with company.

‘What did you choose, darling?' There is welcome relief upon Kate's face as she looks up at her daughter.

Nancy holds Winston out. ‘The teddy,' she says lamely.

‘Oh, that old thing. Her father bought that. It's
cheap
. Is that really what you want to take?' Mrs Reed says, hardly looking up, scrubbing with conviction.

Nancy shrugs. ‘I guess.'

Her mother picks up the neglected, whimpering Thomas and puts him on her lap, jiggling him, allowing him a crook of her knuckle to suckle on. The baby looks like a greedy white grub. ‘Speaking of Mr Reed, have you — have you notified him? I mean, has word been sent to … where he might be?' Kate clears her throat.

‘S'pose he will read it in the papers like everybody else. Whole world knows about Frances now. It's national news, they keep telling me. She would have liked that. She always told me she was going to be famous.'

Nancy watches her mother's brow crinkle in disgust at the remark.

‘Oh … well, perhaps I can talk to the police, if you like. About getting word sent to him.' Unusually, Kate seems awkward and lost for words. ‘If that would be a help to you.' Mrs Reed does not answer. ‘Perhaps if you could provide me with his address …'

‘Don't have any address.' Mrs Reed's words bounce metallically around the room. Her upper arm wobbles with each stroke of the scouring pad.

‘His last known whereabouts?'

‘Who wants to know?' Mrs Reed stops scrubbing, puts both hands on her knees and stares up at her.

‘It's just that, as her father, he would want to … I imagine … be here.'

‘If I get word from him, I'll tell him.'

‘Why don't you stop that now, Peggy? What do you say? Shall I fix us both a drink? You look like you sure could use one,' Kate says, unable to contain herself.

‘I don't keep liquor in this house.' Mrs Reed hoists herself upright and turns, flinging the scourer into the sink.

‘Of course you don't. Silly me.'

Nancy knows that Mrs Reed is not telling the truth because there
is
liquor in the house. Frances had shown her one Sunday when she had stayed home from church, pretending to be sick. She'd fished out a bottle of crème de menthe from behind the porridge oats, and they'd tasted the luminous contents.

‘Ugh! Squid juice,' Frances had gagged.

‘Mmm, no. It's fairy cordial. This is what Oberon and Titania would drink.' Nancy had stuck her green tongue out in delight.

‘This is Puck's love potion. It makes people fall in love and kiss.' Frances had turned her back to Nancy and crossed her arms, running her hands up and down her own sides, tossing her head about and moaning. Nancy understood it was meant to look like she was locked in a passionate embrace, as in the movies, and it did rather.

‘Stop it! That's wicked,' Nancy had squealed. And they both giggled helplessly.

Nancy watches her mother rise and place the baby down delicately in his crib. He starts to cry. Mrs Reed does not move to pick him up. She remains with her back turned, her shoulders taut. ‘Righto then.'

‘Our deepest condolences,' Kate says hurriedly. ‘Peggy, please reconsider. Please think about it.' She turns for the door. ‘We'll show ourselves out.'

‘Wait.' Mrs Reed walks over to the hall cupboard and opens a drawer. In her hands she has some letters that she spreads on the table. Kate stoops to regard them and her lips move over the words but no sound issues.

‘Read them aloud,' Mrs Reed tells her. Nancy can see a vein in her forehead pulsing.

‘I'd rather not.' Kate's eyes dart over the words and she turns a letter face-down in her hand.

‘Read
them, if you please. And then tell me what you make of the wretched things.'

Kate contemplates for a moment and swivels to look at Nancy. ‘Nan, hon, go back to Frances' room.'

‘But I don't want to.'

‘Now!'

Nancy pretends to walk back up the corridor. She makes sure to step heavily to Frances' door and then she slips her shoes off and creeps back down the passageway in only her socks.

‘Peggy, where have these come from?'

‘Please, Kate, I need someone to read them out to me, so I know I'm not going crazy. I've read them so many times, the words are swimming in front of me.'

‘Alright. Of course,' Kate says, with tenderness. ‘
Dear Missus Reed.
' Kate clears her throat and continues hoarsely. ‘
I know who killed your daughter. He has killed others too and he will do again. Put fifty pounds in an envelope and leave it on the bench in a paper bag at St Peter's station. DO NOT CONTACT THE POLICE. I will write again with his name. To prove this is true: the girl had one shilling in the pocket of her cardigan when she died.
' Frances strains to hear her mother's voice, low with concern: ‘Peggy, you can't believe this. It's clearly a load of rubbish. Anyone could have read in the papers she'd been sent on an errand. Have you shown the police?'

There is a long silence. Nancy wishes she could see what is happening. Mrs Reed coughs and says something Nancy cannot catch.

‘Well, if you haven't you should take them at once!' her mother exclaims. ‘You shouldn't have to bear being pestered by fraudsters and lunatics. After all you've been through.'

‘Read the others,' Mrs Reed says thinly, as though whatever resin holding her voice together is wearing out.

‘There are more of these? Peggy, I don't think I need to. I don't think you need to either. You don't need to subject yourself to any more of this nonsense. This is a madman.'

‘Please.'

‘Really, I must insist —'

‘Please!' Mrs Reed's voice strains in an ugly fashion.

Nancy hears the slick of paper unfolding. ‘
Dear Missus Reed, your little girl got what was coming to her —
oh my!' Kate breaks off. There is a crumpling sound like she is throttling the paper. ‘Who could write such a thing? When did these come?'

‘One a day since it was in the news.'

Nancy waits as the moments drag infinitely. Were these letters real? From
him
, the murderer?
She dares to peep around the corner. Kate is hugging Mrs Reed and wiping at her wet eyes. Mrs Reed isn't hugging back, just standing with her hands stiff at her sides.

‘The handwriting is all different.' Kate says, composing herself. ‘As if they're by different men. Or different people, I suppose.'

‘I've noticed that.'

‘And this one cannot even spell. D-E-E-R? Peggy, you need to take them down to the station.'

‘What will they do about it? Police can't seem to catch a fly with their mouths hanging open.'

‘Peggy, these could be clues! They could find that monster! Who knows? They have — they have,' she fumbles for the words, ‘special people who work these things out. Special detectives. Hell — forgive me the language, Peggy — they should call Scotland Yard and ship them out here! Goodness me, if there wasn't a time and a place.'

‘What clues are in here, Mrs Durand? I'm not a fool. I'd rather they chase down actual leads than waste time on nutters,' Mrs Reed says and Nancy hears her pick up Thomas from his crib. Nancy returns to collect her shoes, clattering down the corridor noisily and taking her mother's hand, assessing that their welcome has expired.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Durand, Nancy.' Mrs Reed nods at them. ‘Thank you for your visit. I'll let you know if there's anything further you can do to help.'

‘Come on, Mum.' Nancy tugs her mother's hand. Kate's face is blurred with tears, her dumb mouth opening and shutting. ‘Let's go home now. Thank you for the keepsake, Mrs Reed. I'm sorry for your loss — for Frances.'

They set out for home and it takes Nancy a block before she realises her mother's eyes are still pouring tears, although her face is pointed dauntlessly ahead and her posture is impeccable, and the only sound she makes is the staccato of her heels on the footpath. Nancy rehearses things to say, the sort of comforting things she heard adults say after her father's death, but each one sputters and dies on her lips, like an engine that won't turn over.

‘We have to leave here,' Kate says finally, as she rams the key into the lock of their front door.

‘Leave where?'

‘This place. This city. This horror. I won't raise my daughter here.'

‘But I don't want to leave!'

‘Right now, I do not care very much for what you desire.' She opens the door and, with more force than she might have intended, parcels Nancy into the house. ‘There is a bloody madman out there.'

TWENTY

The first johns of the evening come in. A tall, thin, pale fella in a fancy suit, who is so white and bland that Templeton thinks he looks like a loaf of bread. A rangy soldier who seems more interested in cracking jokes and necking beers with Snowy and Errol than actually getting what he is paying for. And two young fellas, barely seventeen, that he heard on the doorstep daring each other to come in.

The girls go upstairs with them, one by one, leaving Templeton smoking by the fireplace, marooned. He feels ill: his nerves are giving him trouble and there is a tremor in his hand that only a lit cigarette will fix, and he often feels, when standing, that he may visibly tremble or, worse, be sick or faint. He turns the memory of Frances, half-naked and bruised black around the neck, over and over in his mind like the reel of a projector, willing it to catch fire and erase under his incessant replay.

Dolly counts money under a harsh green tablelamp that illuminates the creases in her face beneath her powder. At about one in the morning she sends him off for more beer. She takes his hand and folds it around a key to one of the three cars she has parked out back and tells him where to go and what to say.

‘Him? Come off it, his feet won't reach the bloody pedals on the Ford,' Snowy says with a laugh.

‘You know how to drive, lad,' Dolly says, and it's not a question.

‘Yes ma'am,' he answers. How hard could it be?

High on nervous energy, and slightly unsteady on his feet from the brandy, he fumbles open the car door and slides into the driver's seat. A streetlamp throws an isosceles of orange light into the vehicle, and all else is quiet amid the rows of slumbering terraces. He clings to the steering wheel as he starts the thing up and backs it fitfully out of the yard, almost scraping it on the wall. He is trying to figure out what to do with the clutch as the engine belches, convulses and stalls. Dolly wants him to get to a place on Foveaux Street and knock four times, then twice more on the side door. That is the easy part. He needs the car to carry the crates back.

Taking a steadying breath, he tries again. He creeps up the street, clinging to the curb, as slowly as possible. He can't park, so he drives the car up over the gutter, half onto the footpath, and gets out. After the requisite number of knocks, a thickset man with fingers like sausages opens up. He grunts, nodding at a stack draped with hessian sacking. Templeton's arms ache loading the cases of beer into the back seat and feel weightless and jellified on the wheel driving the way back. But he has done it. Quivering with triumph, he crosses the threshold on return, a case under one arm.

Snowy looks at him sourly. ‘There better not be a scratch on that car.'

‘Good boy. You help yourself.' Dolly tosses him a bottle, which, to his great relief, he catches.