Flesh And Blood (5 page)

McKeirnan’s eyes glazed over and, just beneath his breath, he went back to Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, ‘Shakin’ All Over’.

Elder bit his lip and moved on.

Be thankful for what you’ve got.

Unless, like Helen and Trevor Blacklock, you had nothing. No daughter: empty rooms.

He set out from Cornwall early, bag on the back seat, Thermos of coffee alongside him; unable to shake Susan Blacklock’s disappearance from his mind.

At the first service station he filled up with petrol, checked the oil, pumped air into the tyres. It was a while since the car, an anonymous-looking Ford, had made such a run. In the garage shop he bought two bars of chocolate, orange juice, a roll of extra-strong mints. Calls of nature aside, he wasn’t planning too many stops.

What he would do when he arrived he still wasn’t sure – poke around a bit, he supposed, maybe ask a few questions, jog a few minds, walk the ground.

Outside Exeter the traffic picked up in volume. Elder flicked the radio through the usual permutations: Radios 2, 3 and 4, Classic FM. Mostly he preferred silence. Motorways and then narrow roads across the Yorkshire Wolds before the circumlocution of the A171, twisting between forest and moorland, the sea visible at intervals to the right-hand side. By the time the ruined outline of Whitby Abbey was in sight, the small of Elder’s back was aching, his legs felt cramped, his throat was dry. Slow past the inner harbour, then he parked the car, hefted his bag, and walked the short distance to the White Horse and Griffin, some fifty metres along the cobbles of Church Street.

The room he’d booked ahead was in the eaves: clean sheets, a comfortable bed, an easy chair. Three nights or four, he wasn’t sure. A long slow bath and a change of clothes and, hungrier than he’d supposed, he ate an early meal downstairs, washing it down with a pint of beer. Almost as soon as his face touched the pillow, he was asleep. The sound of gulls, high-pitched and unyielding, woke him before five.

♦

Susan Blacklock had been on holiday from Chesterfield with her parents, two weeks in a caravan at the Haven Holiday Park, high on the cliffs above Whitby, overlooking Saltwick Bay. An only child, at primary school she had seemed happy enough, well-behaved and conscientious; she had her fair share of party invitations, fairy cakes and special dresses, pass the parcel and musical chairs, magicians who made things disappear before your eyes. In the first few years at the comprehensive, however, she had been submerged, so anonymous that at parents’ evenings teachers had to be reminded who she was. But then, at fourteen, she had developed an interest in drama, a talent for acting previously unsuspected; as if when she stepped inside another character, took on a role, she found her voice. In palest blue with a large white bow, she was Alice following the White Rabbit into Wonderland; brave against all odds, as the deaf girl surrounded by war in
Mother Courage,
she moved more than her parents to tears.

All this brought her notice, gave her at least a surface confidence, earned her friends, the attention of boys. At fifteen she was sure she was in love – a seventeen-year-old with tattoos on his back and along his arms; who drank vodka from the bottle and occasionally sniffed glue. Susan’s parents read the riot act, laid down the law. She broke her curfew, threatened, pleaded, cried, stayed out till two. You don’t understand, she screamed, you just don’t understand. But her mother understood all too well.

Then one day when Susan bunked off school to meet him, her beloved, he wasn’t there. On the street, he turned away. When she plucked up the courage to go up to him in the pub, where he was sitting with all of his mates, he laughed in her face.

For six weeks her heart stayed broken, till one morning she woke up, got dressed, got on with whatever it was she had to do and realised, finally, she hadn’t thought of him at all. That night, to her dad’s annoyance, she and her mother giggled like sisters, talked in low voices for hours, held each other and cried.

This holiday marked a new stage in her life: she would start sixth-form college in September, courses in English and drama, media studies, art and design. And then on the third Tuesday in August she disappeared: August, fourteen years ago.

♦

Wearing two sweaters against the early morning chill, Elder walked the length of both piers sheltering the outer harbour. Dressed in all-weather gear, fishermen stood at intervals, rods propped against the rail, cigarettes a small glow inside cupped hands. Along by the fish market, one boat was unloading its night catch, another making its way in. He knew that in Britain almost ten thousand people went missing each year and that of that number roughly a third were never traced, never found.

But he had promised her parents that he would find her, sworn it and been rewarded with trust, bright and anxious on their faces; and, in his gut, he feared she was long dead, her body undiscovered, still waiting to be claimed after all these years.

♦

After breakfast, Elder climbed the hundred and ninety or so steps up to St Mary’s church and the abbey, turning back for a moment to gaze back over the town, the whale’s jawbone arched high on the west cliff on the far harbour side, the statue of Captain Cook close by. Beyond the town and the trees which marked the valley of the River Esk rose the moors, sullen and imposing beneath a patched grey sky.

He walked a short distance inland, crossing through the ridged mud of a farm before meeting the coast path further along. From there it was half a mile or so to the point where Susan had last been seen, a sharp promontory that jutted out over the sea, tufted grass leading to an almost sheer drop down the ridged cliff on to the rocks below. It could be a wild spot but not wholly remote, the path well used by hikers in most weathers; yet it was here, at somewhere between three thirty and four in the afternoon, that Susan Blacklock had last been observed, here that she had, effectively, disappeared.

Elder continued on, past the twin humps of reddish rock that broke the surface of the sea at Saltwick Nab, to the holiday park, a collection of white caravans clustered around a central site, a few brave tents pegged down on higher ground.

Little seemed to have changed: the same small convenience store, albeit with a fresh sign above the door, the same launderette, the office, pool tables and bar food available in the family entertainment club. On a patch of open ground, six or seven small boys stormed around the makeshift goalmouth of a beleaguered dad. A young woman in a neat uniform looked up at him expectantly and Elder nodded and carried on. At the far side, where a white flagpole flying the Union Jack announced the vehicle entrance, he turned about and set off back the way he’d come.

As the path made its slow turn past Saltwick Nab, curving with the contours of the land, Elder saw a woman in a green coat standing close against the spot where Susan Blacklock had last been seen; as he watched, she swung her legs over the low wire fence and stepped towards the edge. Elder began to run. Just for an instant her head turned at the sound of his shout. Then she withdrew a small bouquet of flowers from inside her coat, irises and roses intertwined, and laid it carefully on the ground.

♦

Helen Blacklock stood quite still, hands loosely clasped before her, outlined against the grey-blue of the sea. Her hair had darkened and was flecked here and there with grey. The coat she wore was loose and three-quarterlength, grey trousers, boots. Sensibly dressed. The face she presented to Elder was without make-up, lined about the eyes and mouth, thin-lipped, unsmiling. She was forty-five, Elder thought, forty-six, and could have passed for more.

Now that they stood face to face, he was uncertain what to say. ‘I’m…’

‘I know who you are.’ Her voice quick and sharp as flint.

‘Shouting like that, I didn’t mean to startle you.’

‘You thought I was going to jump.’

‘Yes.’

‘If I’d been going to do that, I’d have done it years ago.’

He looked beyond her to where the flowers were already being buffeted a little by the wind, and she angled her head round, following his gaze.

‘I used to try and keep a garden here, a sort of memorial, I suppose. But it was difficult, being so exposed, and when anything did grow the kids from the camp would pull up the blooms and take them home to their mums. So now I just leave a few flowers, if I’m passing.’ She paused. ‘Sometimes the wind’s so strong it almost snatches them from my hands. Here and gone. Suitable, don’t you think?’

He held the wire down for her while she climbed back across the fence.

‘What are you doing here?’ Helen Blacklock asked.

Elder shook his head. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘But not an accident.’

‘No.’

Gulls wheeled above their heads, roistering on the air.

‘Are you going back into the town?’ Helen asked, and when he nodded, she set off down the path, Elder alongside.

♦

At the foot of the steps, having walked more or less in silence, Helen asked if Elder would like a coffee. The place she chose was unprepossessing from the outside, one of several along a tourist street cramped with shops selling home-made fudge and Whitby jet, seafood and antiques.

They sat at a formica-topped table near the window, the waitress, school-aged, slow to take their order, sullen-eyed. The only other customer, an elderly man in a beige windcheater, sat near the side wall with a pot of tea and the
Sun
.

Helen brought a packet of cigarettes out from the side pocket of her coat. ‘The guilt, that what it is?’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’

‘What you think I should be feeling?’

‘I don’t know.’ She took a cigarette from the pack and tapped the filter down against the table edge; pushed it back from sight, unlit. ‘Except I doubt you’ve been back here, all this time.’

Elder shook his head.

‘Fourteen years. Thirty, that’s what she’d be now. Susan. Thirty this March just gone.’

‘Yes.’

‘You think she died, don’t you? That pair – McKeirnan and the other one – you think they killed her. Like that other poor girl. Lucy.’

‘There’s no proof.’

‘No.’

The waitress brought them cups of coffee on a tray, sugar in paper tubes, the teacake Helen had ordered but no longer wanted, Elder’s toast.

‘Have you heard something? Is that what it is?’ As she spoke, Helen leaned forward, the tone of her voice changed, anticipation like a bruise behind her eyes.

‘Not really.’

‘What do you mean? Either you have or you haven’t. Don’t play games.’

Elder set down his cup, even in its saucer. ‘Shane Donald, McKeirnan’s accomplice, he’s about to be released.’

‘When?’

‘I don’t know. Not for sure.’

Helen leaned back, pushed the tea cake aside and reached for the ashtray, lighting the cigarette after all. ‘That’s why you’re here then, sniffing round. You want to prove you were right this time, have him put back away.’

Elder kept his own counsel; with an automatic gesture, he wafted smoke away from his eyes.

‘What’ll it be this time? More fields dug up, farm buildings searched? The sewage pit by the caravans, you fancied that last time. The beck out by Hawsker Bottoms. The old railway line. Divers going down in the bay again in case they tossed her out to sea?’ Bitterness and anger in her voice, the sharp curve of her chin. ‘No need of that, she’d have washed up long since.’

Tears running freely down her face now, she turned away. When Elder reached out for her hand, she pulled it back as if from a sudden spark.

‘Don’t tell me. Don’t say anything. I don’t, I just don’t want to know.’

He stubbed out her smouldering cigarette and waited for the sobbing to subside. Behind them the old man rattled the pages of his paper and poured more warm water into his tea. The waitress continued to gossip on her mobile phone about the ifs and maybes of the previous night.

After several minutes Helen pulled out some wadded tissues and wiped at her cheeks and eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No. It’s okay.’

‘I haven’t done that in a long time.’

‘Really, it’s all right.’

She sipped her coffee, lukewarm.

‘You want a fresh cup?’

‘No. No, this is fine.’

♦

‘I never imagined I’d bump into you the way I did,’ Elder said. ‘I’m sorry it’s caused you as much upset as it has.’

He left money on the table for the bill. Outside, each hesitated while a straggle of small children crocodiled round them on the narrow street.

‘When are you heading back?’ Elder asked.

‘Back?’

‘Yes, I thought…’

But she was shaking her head. ‘I moved up here a while ago. Trevor and I, we… well, we split up. Years back now. I bought a little place across the other side of the harbour. Susan, you see, I thought at least I could be near her, where she was when I saw her last.’ She stepped a pace away. ‘If you do find out anything…’

‘Of course, I’ll let you know.’

She told him her address and he committed it to memory, then stood there as she walked to the corner and on out of sight, a middle-aged woman, indistinguishable from many another, save for the way she had lost her almost grown-up child, here this minute, gone the next.

Elder wondered, since she’d been alone, what Helen did with her life; how often she climbed those worn stone steps, all hundred and ninety-nine, flowers held against her chest before relinquishing them to the wind; how she filled the spaces in between.

When Shane Donald had first met Alan McKeirnan – a patch of waste ground outside Newark-on-Trent, rain pitching down, and McKeirnan, dark hair flattened against his head, clothes soaked through, struggling with the wheel of a fairground trailer – McKeirnan had cast one eye on him, quick against the wind. ‘You gonna stand there like a fuckin’ statue or lend a hand?’