Chapter Six
Edward stood by the red Porsche in the blazing sunlight.
The last place to look was underneath the Porsche chassis. Was a spare somehow bolted to the underside? There was so little room there.
He dropped to his haunches and opened the right pannier on the bike.
He found the tatty plastic sheet he covered the moped with at night.
Edward placed it on the ground and lay back on it, facing the brilliant blue sky.
There was a whisper of rain for a moment.
Somewhere above him, a lone cloud must have emptied itself like a pissed concert-goer on a sunny day at Glastonbury.
On his back, Edward used his heels to slide his body under the car. Soon he was squished against the underside of the Porsche, almost scratching his nose on the metalwork. A pothole in the road helped a little, giving his body an inch more space.
‘No tyre here either.’ As he lay there, he heard footsteps alongside the car, above his head.
His feet were projecting from under the front number plate. Edward tilted his head, pushing it back into the gravel. He could only see the ankle of a man’s suit trousers, polished red brogues, and a woman’s slim calves, the skin a deep tan or maybe Asian, the feet propped in a towering heel.
The woman’s voice said, ‘Fuck’s sake.’
The man said, ‘I got carried away is all.’
‘We’ll buy it, I guess,’ said the woman. Then: ‘Did Vinnie say the parachute was through?’
He said something Edward failed to hear, there were more footsteps on gravel, and then the two were gone.
As soon as he got out from under the car, his phone rang. ‘Where are you?’
‘Where you left your car.’
‘You’ll never guess who I met in – sorry, what, my car? Why?’
‘Thought I’d change the tyre for you.’
‘Oh, my beautiful fool. There’s no spare on a Porsche.’
‘Who have you met?’ asked Edward, trying to spare his own blushes.
‘Come to Nine Chairs and you’ll find out.’ Everyone knew Nine Chairs. The place had been called ‘Twenty-Two Chairs’, until legislation insisted that any establishment with ten seats or more must provide a customer toilet.
He arrived fifteen minutes later, inching through the door as a wide-set young man in a black tracksuit shouldered his way out.
‘Edward!’ exclaimed Stevie, getting up as though to hug him, but he held a hand out in warning.
‘No no, please don’t, I might be infectious.’
‘You should see a doctor,’ Kim tutted. This took them into medical territory, and Stevie described her slow recovery from the burns and hospital visits.
‘But you look as right as rain to me!’ said Edward hoarsely.
Stevie shot back: ‘Come off it, sunny Jim.’
Her turns of phrase were so distinctive, so very Stevie, that they all burst out laughing together. Stevie added, seriously: ‘I’ve just counted the chairs in here. Nineteen. WTF, actually,’ which made Kim and Edward laugh again.
Kim said: ‘Don’t ever change, lovely girl. Not for anyone, not even Roddy.’
‘Roddy?’ asked Edward.
Stevie froze. ‘Don’t be chilly on it, Kim. He takes a little getting used to, that’s all. I’m going to get him out of his tracksuit on the day.’
‘Whose tracksuit? What day? What have I missed?’
Increasing his confusion, Kim seemed unwilling to engage. Stevie asked Edward, ‘Are you still the most famous person in Sidmouth?’
‘I’m not even the most famous person in this café,’ said Edward, surprising himself by adding: ‘I think I’m getting sacked soon.’
‘What?’ asked Stevie.
‘Problems with the boss. He says my show doesn’t have any stories.’
‘That could be a problem if it’s a news show.’
‘Wrong thing to say, Stevie,’ said Kim in a stage whisper. ‘Anyway. Edward darling. You were whispering something down the phone about your crossbow lady.’
Edward nodded, then shrugged as if to say it might be something and nothing.
‘Well, Stevie knows who this lady is,’ said Kim.
Stevie said, ‘Have been googling while you walked over. I know this case. But I think you might have missed it because you had quite a lot of … very difficult, fucking difficult, bloody shite basically in your life at that time. Oh, and I lost my grandmother too, so for me the Wrigley case was … argh, what word am I looking for …?’
‘Peripheral?’ suggested Kim.
‘Lost in the wash,’ Stevie preferred. Her voice was strong, the accent broad Glasgow. ‘Anyway, memory refreshed. Shall I fill you in? Because I really don’t think you should be seeing this lady. Not even getting close to a waft of her expensive perfume.’
Stevie kept them in suspense, insisting on fetching a drink for Edward before explaining. Kim looked at Edward while Stevie was away from their window seats. He could not read Kim’s expression. Their stools were in a straight line facing the window, with Stevie’s, now empty, placed between them.
‘Nice to see her,’ mouthed Edward, thumbing at Stevie’s back as she queued at the till. Kim pursed her lips and rocked her head, moving a hand out in front of her, palm down, and tipping it left and right. ‘You’re not so keen?’ asked Edward, misreading.
‘God, no, I love her to bits. But I’m worried,’ whispered Kim. ‘She’s getting married to a chap called Roddy. I don’t think he respects her. He left a minute before you arrived and he asked to borrow money and she gave him her last twenty and then he got cross that she didn’t have any more and—’
‘Wait. Are you crying?’
‘He had a tattoo saying “one hundred” – what’s that?’
‘Oh, I read about it, I think that’s—’
She cut in. ‘Cover for me.’ He saw Stevie returning.
‘What is it?’ Stevie asked a second later. ‘Did you say something to upset her, because if you did I’ll tip this milkshake over you.’
‘No,’ said Edward, unable to laugh. ‘She has hay fever.’
‘It’s strawberry. Lots of pips all over you.’
‘Pips don’t make me guilty.’
Stevie set their drinks down. She sat between them, sucking loudly on the milkshake, facing out of the café to the street. The other two turned inwards towards her.
‘Can I just say …’ Edward began.
‘No, you can’t,’ said Stevie, ‘because you’ve got no voice.’
‘Only that – the three of us …’ His voice gave up. He formed a heart with his hands.
‘He loves us,’ said Kim, her eyes clear of tears now.
‘I know what heart-hands mean,’ said Stevie, ‘but thank you for explaining, old lady.’ Kim laughed. Stevie continued: ‘Listen up, team. The key person is a GP called Jonathan Wrigley. He was out walking, and he was shot with a crossbow.’
Edward held up his hand. ‘Where?’ he mouthed.
‘Through the heart.’
Edward shook his head.
‘Oh, you mean “where-where”? In a wood by Chittlehamholt Airfield. Where he was out walking.’
‘That’s definitely Devon,’ whispered Edward. He shook his head and pulled a face that said, if it happened in Devon in the last ten years – a GP shot dead with a crossbow – he would definitely know about it. But Kim reached across and put her hand on his knee.
‘Matty,’ she said. ‘That’s why you’ve got no memory of the time.’
Edward felt his heart sag, like a washing line suddenly overloaded with a wet rug and about to snap.
He inhaled sharply, waiting for the feeling to pass.
The three of them were silent for a moment.
The death of Edward’s boy at the age of eleven would have been around that time.
Edward had been signed off work for more than a year.
The period was a blank. He nodded. Kim squeezed his knee gently.
Stevie continued. ‘It was a long way from here. The other side of Devon. The doctor lived in a village somewhere. He was out walking. He was shot. The weirdest thing is, a bloke in a plane saw him lying there.’
‘A plane?’ asked Kim. ‘Like, a commercial flight?’
‘A light aircraft. He landed and reported it straightaway, so they timed the death really precisely. The reason I said you need to stay away from Wendy is that everyone thinks she did it. Can you believe I’m getting married, Edward?’
The change of subject was the equivalent of a hairpin bend in a racing car, and it left Edward breathless.
Edward tried to say, ‘Who to—?’ but no words came out.
‘Where’s your hearing aid?’ Stevie asked. ‘I’ve just saw you’re not wearing it. Have ye been healed?’
By now, unable to speak at all, Edward wrote on a napkin: Battery went.
‘Typical guy,’ Stevie said to Kim. ‘If he can’t speak, why would he need to hear anything?
’ That made Kim roar with laughter. Edward smiled bleakly, feeling like the old guy, and shook his head at the unfairness.
The hearing aid was in his pocket. He could still hear with his right ear, and he pointed at it now, making a thumbs up.
He wrote on the napkin: Who’s the lucky guy?
‘Roddy. He has prospects, too.’
‘We are both so excited for you, Stevie,’ said Kim. She waited a beat, to see whether more needed to be said about Roddy. Then she added: ‘That’s probably why Wendy moved down here. The finger-pointing.’
Edward wrote a single word on a napkin. Alibi?
‘She was in a cinema watching some Marvel film and there’s no way she could have done it herself,’ answered Stevie. ‘That’s the mystery. They didn’t have problems in their relationship—’
‘That’s even more suspicious,’ put in Kim.
‘She bought the crossbow.’
‘What?’ Edward mouthed, eyes wide.
‘Yep,’ said Stevie.
Again, Edward wrote on the napkin: Where was the crossbow?
‘Could you write faster as my birthday is in August?’ Stevie said.
Edward laughed. She replied, ‘Missing. She had a crossbow, for God’s sake, and it was gone from the house!
So everyone assumed she used it to kill him.
Basically she did it. Case closed. Stay well away. She’ll probably murder you next.’
Stevie wanted to be done with the explanations, Edward could tell.
He remembered Wendy Wrigley’s immaculate appearance and now, in retrospect, saw her as she was – below the clear surface, a roaring ocean of silent distress.
Her exterior was impeccable, as if Wendy Wrigley had used Photoshop to blanch her own sadness.
The spotless jumper hid a bleeding heart.
The lady was in trauma and he had not seen it. She was no killer.
Kim said, ‘Wait. Do I remember she wasn’t seen to mourn enough? Not reacting in the right way when your husband dies, that’s a crime these days.’
Stevie, as ever ahead on the detail, said: ‘There was a headline: “Mystery of Smirking Widow”. The papers took against her. The police made it clear they were sure it was her, they even said they were not looking—’
‘“For any other suspects in connection with the murder”.’ Kim completed the sentence, remembering now. ‘Brutal.’
‘Pardon my French,’ said Stevie, ‘but she fucking deserved it.’
Edward pushed his voice. ‘If she was in the cinema when it happened, it can’t have been her.’
Stevie looked out of the window, as if summoning facts from the sea. ‘The inquest could have gone for murder, but they couldn’t rule out an accident or even suicide. Total mystery. So it was an open verdict.’
Edward thought it all through, for a moment distracted from his throat.
A madman attacks a local doctor with a crossbow, apparently the one his wife owns.
That made no sense. A different crossbow, then?
But if so, why did hers go missing? If he shot himself with a crossbow, the weapon could not have gone missing after his death.
Did she tell someone else to kill her husband and create a too-obvious alibi, going to the cinema like that?
If Wendy’s crossbow was a red herring and it was nothing to do with Wendy or a madman, then you had to work out why a third party would want the doctor dead so badly.
He came back to his certainty: She didn’t do it. Why would a killer, who has got away with it, bring him in to investigate?
‘He’s writing again. Take your time, Edward,’ said Kim.
Edward needed more space, so he had taken Stevie’s napkin, then slid it back towards the other two.
Want to talk to her.
Stevie rolled her good eye. ‘Come on. What’s to investigate?’
Edward stared at Stevie. He was aware of Kim’s gaze on him. Kim said, ‘I think he wants to ask some more questions when his voice comes back.’
Stevie said, ‘You’re thinking we should bring her in?’
Now Kim and Edward both snorted with laughter. ‘Stevie! “Bring her in”! We aren’t the police!’ cried Kim. ‘Edward, love, what are you writing now?’
‘He thinks he’s fucking Columbo,’ said Stevie.
‘If he’s fucking Columbo that would be a major scandal in Sidmouth.’
‘Not like that!’ protested Stevie.
‘This is what happens when you pipe down, Ed. We get to tease you.’ Kim was tender for a second.
Stevie chimed in, ‘Ignore us, sir. We love you.’ The younger woman took the napkin.
Edward pointed at the words, which had scratched small holes in the tissue, as if he was getting crosser when he wrote them.
I want to see where his body was found
And talk to her again
And then: Delighted to hear your marriage news Stevie.
When Kim saw the last sentence, she shot him a glance he could not comprehend.
Stevie upped and left a minute later, pulling a cowboy hat from a stool where neither Edward nor Kim had noticed it and pushing it hard onto her head. When she was gone, Edward tapped on his phone, brought up a webpage and showed it to Kim.
URBAN SLANG: The emoji is commonly associated with misogyny and incel groups. It purports to mean that 80 per cent of women are only attracted to 20 per cent of men.
‘Oh God,’ said Kim as she read it. ‘Edward darling, is this really happening? Stevie is marrying an incel bailiff and we can’t do anything about it?’
‘Bailiffs do a necessary job, I guess.’
‘He was boasting about burning children’s coats earlier!’
‘Do we intervene somehow?’
‘You think Stevie would let us say anything this close to the wedding?’ Kim asked desperately.
Edward signalled at his throat. His voice was a whisper and he did not want to push the words out.
‘Well that’s convenient,’ said Kim, only half-joking.