16. Pushing Up Daisies #2
“California,” Trystan clarifies. “There was a surf competition. I didn’t go because I needed to help set up the Wipeout festival here.”
“Okay.” Not helpful in any way, but I press on. “What’s Gabriel’s surname?”
“Cobbledick.”
Oh, my sweet baby Jesus. “Cobbledick, as in the undertaker Kelsey Cobbledick?”
“Angel’s Gabe’s uncle,” Trystan says.
I keep my features neutral, but internally I’m either about to have an apoplexy or an orgasm at the onslaught of all this new information.
That gives Angel an enormous motive for killing Trystan, especially if his nephew was also due to compete in the local championship.
“What did your body look like when you found it?” I asked.
“I never saw it. I was . . .” Trystan looks away, through the knots of brambles into nothing at all. Silence falls between the ghosts while we wait for him to elaborate. Waves crash rhythmically against the shore, sounding closer than I know they are.
Jeanie fills in. “Death can be a very distressing time for some. Especially . . .” She looks at Trystan with worry etched into her features. Perhaps anxious about how triggering her next words could be. “Especially if you had a lot to live for.”
“I woke up in the hut. Didn’t realise I was dead for ages .
. . Thought I’d been stung by a Portuguese man o’war or something and that I was tripping balls, and that’s why I couldn’t touch anything or make myself heard.
I tried to sleep it off, but the next thing I knew Dave Davies was packing up all of my stuff into bags, and then Jeanie was there and I could talk to her.
Last time I saw Jeanie was about three years earlier at Wipeout, and since she was officially a missing person, that was the moment I knew I was fucked. ”
I feel like I want to hug him, and I’m not someone who ever uses physical touch to comfort another.
I don’t hug him, though. Instead, I wait until Pixie puts her arm around his waist and pulls him tighter, whilst I quietly reprimand myself for not getting in there first. After all, it was my question that made him so vulnerable, placing him directly in the firing line of hug-reception.
“I saw it,” Peter says, slightly more sober than he was moments ago. “Can I?”
Trystan shrug-nods, like he’s given up all fight.
“Blue lips, bloodshot eyes, wet hair. Obviously drowned. But, and here’s the crucial thing . . . Trystan’s hair was only wet at the front, but the rest of his body was dry. Also, remember that man who drowned in the sea about eight years ago?” Peter turns to me.
My immediate thought is to say, “No, I don’t remember. I wasn’t here.” But then I realise this is all part of his performance.
“There was this couple swimming, and they’d gone too far out and got stuck in a . . . thingy . . .”
“Rip tide,” Trystan helpfully fills in.
“Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, Trystan saw them struggling and saved the woman.”
I want to ask how a ghost can rescue a drowning person, but it feels rude, so I just look imploringly at Trystan.
“Basically, I possessed the woman, grabbed the man, and swam back to the beach. I left her on the sand, and she received emergency first aid, but the man didn’t make it.
It’s the only time I’ve ever possessed anyone.
I know I saved her life, but I feel . . .
responsible for losing the guy,” Trystan explains.
“His name was Alan Whittard. He had a son. I’ll never forget that little boy standing there in his yellow towel watching the lifeguards pointlessly try to resuscitate his dad. ”
“Alan’s death was not your fault,” I say.
Now. Now would be a good time to hold him. A consolatory embrace. Though, am I just being creepy? Am I using his vulnerability as an excuse to touch him? Or does he genuinely need the personal contact?
And again, it’s too late. Someone else jumps in before I can even muster the courage to take a step forward. Jeanie sweeps him into a matronly, pillowy cuddle, pulling him down to meet her halfway. She smooths the back of his head.
“Luv, you did what you could. There could easily have been two deaths that day,” she says.
“Awesome, thanks, Petey, for bringing that up.” Pixie gives Peter a thumbs-up gesture.
“Hang on a second.” A lightbulb flashes in my brain. I turn the scrap of paper over to look at the list of names. “Alan’s not here.”
“Because Alan’s death was a genuine accident,” Peter says, ignoring Pixie’s glare. “Who wrote that list?” He crosses his arms and pouts his lips. “Exactly.”
“It’s—” I begin, but Peter interrupts.
“Anyway, the point of me bringing up that story was to illustrate that Alan, who drowned in the sea, had this big distended belly, probably from all the sea water he’d swallowed. But Trystan, who apparently also ‘drowned in the sea,’ did not.”
“Hmm,” I say, processing. It’s safe to say we already know Trystan was murdered.
Someone who’s that competent at swimming would not have succumbed to waters they knew like the back of their hand.
And someone who drowns at sea does not then drag themselves into a surfboard rental hut, dry off the rest of their body, and then haul themselves up to Helga’s office.
But my thoughts are firmly stuck on that list. Why was Alan never mentioned?
And if it is as Peter suggests, a sign of a greater conspiracy, why would Helga just out and out hand me a copy of her conquests?
Unless . . .
Unless she wasn’t frightened of me piecing the jigsaw together because she already had plans to murder me as well . . .
Maybe she overheard the radio in Franny’s office broadcasting my last episode of Unalive on Air and realised she’d have to act fast in order to silence me . . .
But why would she kill Trystan? And why would she carry his body up three hundred plus steps to dump it in her own office?
A double bluff?
I massage my temples. My brain aches. But it aches in a good way.
This is the part I love.
“Okay, Stove,” I say, moving the conversation on. I’m loathe to ask Stove anything because I already know whatever he says needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, but in an effort to be thorough, I must question him too. “What can you tell me about your death?”
“Franny killed me,” he says. Simple. To the point. I’ll give him that.
“How can you be sure?” I ask.
“She was there. I saw her.”
Jeanie jumps in. “No he didn’t.”
“Oh yes he did,” Stove says panto-style.
“When?” Pixie says, as though it’s her first time hearing this version of events too.
“Literally right after I died. I opened my eyes, and Franny was there holding a stalactite, covered in my blood.”
“First of all . . .” Jeanie puts a hand in the air. “Why have you never told anyone this before? And second of all, what the flying fuck?”
Stove rolls his eyes, but I just know he’s lapping this up.
“I told you all already. Nobody believed me. You all said Franny wasn’t strong enough to wield a stalactite like a club, and that I must have imagined it, and that maybe I took a bump to my noggin.
” He’s laughing now, and I honestly don’t know whether he’s making stuff up for shits and giggles or if he’s being genuine.
I trust this man about as far as I could throw him, and considering he has a good eight inches of height on me, that wouldn’t be very far at all.
“Earlier, you told me Helga killed everyone, and before that Sergeant Davies . . .” I’m not asking a direct question, only asking for clarification. Which of his tales should we believe?
He doesn’t answer, perhaps because he can’t. Maybe he doesn’t know himself and he’s been spinning webs, or perhaps he just doesn’t want to reveal the truth.
Either way, I can’t be fucked to continue interviewing him. I’ll ask the others another time, the ones who died before him, to see if they have any trustworthy insight.
“Josh,” I say, moving on.
Josh looks up from his phone. “Yeah?”
“Was there anything weird about your death? Besides getting your head blown up by a cupcake that is?”