Bad Sons (Booker & Cash Book 1) (4 page)

‘Mr Booker?’

I nodded.

‘I’m sorry about your aunt.’ She came into the room and sat down opposite me. I caught a whiff of fragrance that reminded me of someone I couldn’t place. ‘Sorry about the wait, too.’ They had probably been checking what they could of my story. It wouldn’t have been much. ‘No doubts it was your aunt this morning? None at all?’

‘None.’

‘Tell me what you told my uniform colleague, would you? I need to hear it from you.’

‘From where?’

‘From the beginning.’

Where was the beginning?

I told about my arrival the previous evening, what I’d done about finding neither of my relatives at home. I repeated the events of the morning. She nodded her way through it all, concentrating hard on my words and how I delivered them.

‘Why didn’t you phone the police this morning?’

‘I did. I spoke to someone here. A woman. I told her some of what I’ve just told you. She said I should phone back when twenty-four hours had elapsed. I couldn’t report them missing before then.’

She nodded and scribbled a note to herself.

‘Did you get her name?’

‘No.’

‘Why are you back in Dymchurch?’ It didn’t sound like a casual enquiry.

I explained.

She asked for a description of my uncle and jotted that down too.

‘I’ll try the hospitals.’

‘I called the Harvey and the Victoria this morning.’

‘They might try a bit harder for me.’

She tapped her pencil a couple of times on the tabletop. ‘Apart from the death of your aunt, I’m more than a little concerned at what you’ve told me about the whole thing. They couldn’t have just forgotten you were coming?’

‘No chance.’ I explained about the calendar, the conversation with the woman in the baker’s, the beer in the fridge and finding the receipt for it.

She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘What is it you do in Istanbul?’

‘I’m an English teacher.’

She looked disappointed. ‘I’ll circulate the details of your uncle to uniform.’ She might have been about to say something more, to explore something of her professional concern at where things were, how they looked, but she changed her mind. She tapped the pencil again. ‘So you’re staying in their flat above the bookshop?’

‘Yes.’

‘How about I give you a lift home and come in for a look. You might have missed something I won’t.’

I doubted it, but I needed a lift, so I agreed.

She told me to wait there for her while she sorted a couple of things out. I spent another six minutes breathing in sick fumes and staring at the painted blockwork of the opposite wall. But I wasn’t really looking at it. I was back to asking myself the questions the police were going to be considering: how did my aunt end up dead in the English Channel? And where was my uncle?

*

I was surprised it was just Detective Cash and me driving back to Dymchurch and a few minutes into the journey I said so.

‘What did you expect?’

‘I thought the police went everywhere in twos.’

‘We do if we have cause. How long have you lived in Turkey?’

‘It’s my third year.’

‘Like it?’

‘I prefer it to home. At the moment.’

‘How long has your uncle been in business?’

‘Since before I was born.’

‘I’ve driven past the shop a few times. Never been in though.’ Something occurred to her. ‘Have you been in the shop since you returned?’

I said I hadn’t. I nearly added, why? But we both knew why she had asked the question.

We drove in silence along the Sandgate seafront and then she avoided Hythe town centre by continuing up alongside the Hotel Imperial golf course, hugging the sea wall.

‘So, he’s retiring?’ She was still talking about him in the present tense.

‘Yes. I’m home to help him for a week to pack up his stock. He’s selling it abroad.’

‘What were their plans for retirement?’

‘I don’t know.’ I wasn’t lying. ‘I expected to find out about that this week.’

‘Can I be straight with you about something?’

It seemed a strange thing for her to say to me. ‘Please do.’

‘From what you’ve told me, I’m concerned for your uncle’s well-being.’

She didn’t elaborate on her reasons for that, so to fill the void I said, ‘So am I.’

We passed the community football pitches, the municipal swimming pool and the tennis courts. She navigated the vehicle confidently through the quiet narrow back roads until we were once again on the A259 heading out of Hythe.

‘When was the last time you were home?’

‘Christmas.’

‘And the last time you spoke to either of them?’

‘We Skyped last week. Most of our communication is done by email.’

She was thinking a lot and I didn’t like to interrupt her.

Her mobile rang. She answered it. So much for setting an example.

After a brief conversation she terminated the call. ‘No one of your uncle’s description has been admitted to either of the nearest hospitals.’

We drove alongside the Army ranges towards Redoubt.

‘Were your relatives in the habit of going for walks on the beach and the sea wall?’

‘Yes. It’s one of the things they cherished most about living where they did.’

‘What was your aunt wearing this morning?’

I thought about it. I thought hard. The zip had only been lowered enough for me to see her face. I tried to remember if there had been a suggestion of a coat or scarf. I explained to Cash why I couldn’t answer that and she accepted that I couldn’t say.

She made a phone call and asked for that information to be quickly found out and advised. She dropped her speed to match the signs as we came up on the New Beach holiday park. 

‘You should prepare yourself for the worst.’

She didn’t say what the worst was, but it didn’t take much guessing.

***

6

I directed her through the Dymchurch Parish Council car park where my relatives had a vehicular right of way to the rear of their premises. We bounced and jolted the length of it as she made a poor fist of negotiating a course through the potholes. It was not nicely and expensively surfaced like the Shepway Council car park opposite. 

We pulled up in the pea beach behind my uncle’s car.

‘Whose is that?’

I told her. She grunted. We got out and I fished under the flowerpot for the key.

Detective Cash tutted. ‘Not very original and not very secure.’

I let us in and led the way upstairs to the flat. I didn’t expect to see my uncle materialise but I more than half hoped he would. The longer I went without word of him now the bleaker it would look. Apart from us two, the place was empty and quiet as a deep thought.

‘Where do you want to look?’

‘Mind if I just poke about a bit on my own for a minute?’

‘Help yourself. You’ll need more than a minute though if you’re going to look the whole place over. It’s a confusing warren, I’ll warn you.’

‘If I get lost, I’ll give you a shout.’

‘I’m going to make tea, would you like one?’

She smiled nicely. ‘Go on then. No sugar, just a dash of milk.’

*

The kettle had boiled, I’d immersed the tea bags, added milk, taken the tea bags out and was leaning against the kitchen counter sipping mine and wondering what the hell was going on before she reappeared.

‘I see what you mean. What a place. And the books.’

She accepted the tea with a thank you and a nod. We sipped in quiet contemplation.

‘What were you looking for?’

‘Something that didn’t look right.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing stands out. Mind me asking where you slept last night?’

‘The sofa.’

She looked out of the window at the builder’s yard. ‘What’s that place?’

I told her. She asked who owned it. I told her that too.

‘Have you got the keys to the shop downstairs?’

I hooked them off the wall.

‘Let’s take a look then, shall we?’

Before we got to the top of the stairs her phone rang again. After a brief conversation she put it back in her pocket.

‘Your aunt wasn’t wearing a coat or a jacket when they pulled her out of the sea. Just a pullover. It’s possible it could have come off in the water, I suppose, if she had been wearing one. She had nothing on her feet either, which I find strange.’

‘She wouldn’t have gone out in yesterday evening’s weather without a coat. No one of her age would. And she wouldn’t have gone out in a coat without doing it up first. It was raining when I arrived. What was the weather like during the day?’

‘Same. It rained all afternoon in Folkestone.’

‘I can’t see how a fastened coat could come off anyone in the water, can you?’

She looked to be giving this some thought. ‘Where do they keep their coats normally?’

I showed her the cupboard. There were several coats and jackets for each of them. Impossible to tell if one was missing. Or two.

We went downstairs.

The smell hit me like a spell, stimulating memories like only a scent can. Pungent old books. Despite my uncle’s preference for modern first editions he had also accumulated, through bulk purchases, hundreds of older books over the years. It was their mustiness, their tooled leather bindings, their ancient paper and ink that overpowered all other competing odours. It was a smell I relished and a look he’d liked. I noticed Detective Constable Cash inhale it and I liked her for it.

The shop was a decent size for an independent bookshop. It spread over the whole of the ground floor. There were walls of order and islands of chaos, shelves of hardbacks and piles of paperbacks. Colourful dust-jacketed spines stood uniformly together generating stretches of intrigue. Along one long wall oak bookcases had been made to measure and match a long time ago, locally, when that kind of thing wouldn’t need a remortgage, and these had aged to a distinctive rich brown.

Floor to ceiling was higher down here, perhaps ten feet. The books went all the way to the top. There was a ladder that ran on a rail just like in the old-fashioned libraries of aristocrats in the movies. It was my uncle’s indulgence, although at his age he didn’t glide up and down on it like he used to when he was younger and showing it off.

A good solid counter made out of matching timber stood between the shop floor area and a couple of smaller rooms off to one side: a toilet and a small kitchen.

My uncle and aunt spent years working out of this space, often six days a week, and in those years they had made it more like a browsing library than a retail establishment; more of a home than a workplace. There were a couple of good leather sofas and matching wingback chairs, and dotted around a few little matching leather footstools for people to sit on while they perhaps sampled a chapter or two of a potential purchase.

In truth there were fewer and fewer physical callers in later years; the vast majority of the business was Internet and mail order, but those that did come, and it was mostly by appointment only, were always welcomed and pleased to be there. It was a shot of nostalgia for most of them as much as anything else; a reminder of the good old days.

I noticed Detective Cash give the room a long appreciative look. ‘This place would make a fantastic boutique coffee shop, if you thinned the stock out and tidied up a bit.’

I gave her some good advice. ‘I wouldn’t mention that to my uncle when you see him.’

We explored independently and probably for different reasons. The shop looked much like it always had. There were maybe fewer books as my uncle and aunt had stopped buying and concentrated on selling. I wandered around the shelves and the alcoves renewing some old acquaintances, prompting some memories.

I felt better in the shop than in the flat and it was with a start and a pang I remembered that only a couple of hours before I’d seen my dead aunt pulled out of the English Channel.

When my uncle showed up nothing was ever going to be the same again for either of us. He’d need me and I experienced a jolt of what I had to recognise honestly as guilty relief that I would now have to delay my return to my home, my work and my domestic troubles in Istanbul.

Detective Cash came out from where she’d been poking about in the rooms behind the counter. ‘There’s nothing back there to interest me professionally.’ She sounded pleased about it. ‘So the idea is you’re to help him pack all these up?’ She took in the stock with a careless sweep of her arm.

‘Yes,’ I said, openly acknowledging the obvious enormity of the task and misreading what she was thinking.

‘So where are all the boxes and packing materials?’ And she was looking at me with something approaching professional interest again.