That One May Smile Read online

  He had a quick conversation with Andrews who, like the inspector, thought the trip was a waste of time.

  ‘Stop worrying Peter,’ Mike said, ‘I’ll be back tomorrow night and at least I’ll have put the Come-to-Good angle to bed. You talk to the bank and have an alert put out for that bloody woman.’

  ‘You said yourself, you never told her she couldn’t go anywhere!’ Andrews argued. ‘Maybe she has gone on a visit somewhere. Could be something innocent, you know.’

  West looked at him scathingly, ‘You don’t believe that for a second, Pete. There is something decidedly fishy about Ms Kelly Johnson. Coincidences keep piling up and you don’t believe in them anymore than I do.’

  Andrews shrugged then grinned. ‘You just go on your junket to Cornwall, Sergeant and leave it all to me.’

  Air Southwest was an efficient airline that had him on the ground in Plymouth ten minutes ahead of schedule without, thankfully, the fanfare that accompanied the same event on a Ryanair flight.

  There were a number of car rental offices in the arrivals area and he walked to the first of these and within minutes of form filling was in the possession of car keys to a Ford Focus and was walking toward the parking area.

  He had rented a satellite navigation system and he quickly keyed in the postal code of the only accommodation in Come-to-Good, a piece of information Andrews had rung to tell him en route to the airport in Dublin. The sat nav quickly digested his information and displayed the information required. Arrival time would be one o’clock. West sighed wearily, was this a complete waste of time?

  He sighed again as he pulled up in front of his destination in Come-to-Good, a beautiful old public house that showed not a glimmer of life. He hadn’t asked Andrews the name of the pub and saw, with a glimmer of amusement, that it was called simply, The Inn. He noted a sign for the car park and swung his car around, parking it in the corner of the virtually empty, unlit lot assuming that there would be some means of entering the place. Andrews was supposed to ring and warn them of his late arrival.

  Grabbing his bag, he headed for the inn door and, giving it a tentative push was relieved when it gave easily and opened it into a warm inviting room. It was just after one and the room was empty apart from a large man behind the bar who scrutinised him as he entered.

  ‘Good evening,’ West broke the silence. ‘I know it’s late but there should have been a room booked for me. My name is West, Mike West.’

  The landlord reached under the counter and, for a brief terrifying moment, West thought he was reaching for a gun. Fear flashed through him, searingly painful memories following inevitably on its tail. The appearance of a disreputable ledger drew a short laugh of relief that drew a quizzical glance from the landlord.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ West hastened to explain, ‘I’ve had a long day. I’m just relieved you are still open.’

  ‘We wouldn’t turn a traveller away this time of night. No matter how much the nuisance he was,’ the landlord returned bluntly. ‘Anyway, your friend rang so we were expecting you.’ He turned to the relevant page and turning the register around toward West, used a large index finger to indicate the next vacant line. ‘Just sign here, please.’

  West dropped his bag on a nearby bar stool and taking the proffered pen started to write his name. It’s a habit with most people to read the other names in registers like this and West was not immune to natural curiosity. The other name on the page, surprised him so much, he dropped the pen and had to scrabble on the beer-sticky floor between the bar stools to retrieve it.

  Putting on his best poker face, he completed the signing-in process, managing at the same time to elicit information from the landlord about business at this time of the year. Armed with the information that only two of the ten rooms were, in fact, occupied he settled into his surprisingly comfortable room. He toyed with the idea of going from room to room till he located her but, with a protracted yawn, and the vision of a comfortable bed in front of him, he decided that morning would be soon enough.

  Moments later, he was stretching in the most incredibly soft bed he had ever been in and before the stretch finished he was relaxed. He lay for a moment going over the events of the day, remembering clearly Kelly Johnson’s reaction when he had mentioned Come-to-Good. Perfidious female, he thought sleepily and, shutting his eyes on that note, he didn’t open them till morning.

  In another room, not far away, Kelly slept through early morning deliveries and the clatter of the empty bottles being emptied behind the inn. It was the incessant bark of the squirrels that eventually made her open one eye, quickly followed by the other. She stretched and lay for a moment enjoying the play of light through the windows. Hopping out of bed she drew back the curtains and, scampering back under the duvet, lay watching the leaves on the trees outside swaying in a light breeze. She watched a squirrel hopping from branch to branch and jumping onto the roof of an adjoining building. She knew they could be destructive, were considered rodents by many, but she loved them and their very unique bark always made her smile.

  Checking the time she was surprised to see it was eight o’clock and suddenly hungry she threw back the duvet and clambered out of bed remembering that breakfast was only served till nine. Her wardrobe didn’t lend itself to much choice so, after a quick shower, she donned the same jeans as yesterday and the shirt she had hung in the wardrobe from which most, if not all, the creases had fallen. Opening her door she headed down to where she could hear the tinkle of cups and, even more of a give-away she thought, the aroma of coffee. Hesitating at the door, she was propelled into the room by the landlord who came from the kitchen region bearing a well-laden tray.

  ‘In you go, love,’ he addressed her warmly, ‘take a seat wherever you like, I’ll be with you as soon as I have served this gentleman.’ He bustled by her and, balancing the tray in one hand, he off-loaded it with the other in front of a man, seated just out of her line of vision.

  She chose a seat in a window embrasure which had a pretty view of the garden. For a moment, as she sat looking out at tulips and early clematis she almost forgot why she was there. The tulips were at the blowzy stage, petals falling open, showing their secrets to the world in a rampantly sexual way. She loved them and had planted numerous in the garden in Foxrock many of which were still in bloom. The most incredibly sexual flowers, she had told Simon last year as she had planted the bulbs, promising to show him what she meant when they came into bloom. A promise she had been unable to keep.

  She was called away from the view and her reminisces by a hearty, ‘What can I get you, then.’

  Quickly perusing the menu, and recognising an incipient hunger, she ordered a full breakfast with coffee. The coffee came quickly and was followed soon after by a lavish spread to which she proceeded to do full justice. She was just polishing off the last mushroom when she saw movement in the far corner and, assuming the other diner was leaving, paid no more attention. So it was with surprise that she saw the chair opposite her being pulled out and it was with absolute shock that she recognised the man who sat down in it.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said with such an irritatingly smug look on his face that she wanted to slap him there and then. ‘Enjoying your breakfast,’ he continued, crossing his arms and tilting the chair back.

  Speechless, Kelly felt the breakfast gurgling in response to her increasingly rapid heartbeat. ‘What are you doing here,’ she managed to blurt out eventually.

  Sergeant Mike West raised an eyebrow and lowered the legs of the chair. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out the scrap of paper he had had photocopied from the one they had found on the body. He smoothed it between two fingers, and reaching over he placed it on the table in front of her and sat back. It was all done very slowly, a trick he used often to unnerve people. It usually worked. This time, however, he had met a worthy opponent. She looked at the scrap of paper, reached down to get her handbag and, searching for a moment, pulled out her own scrap of paper. Smoothing
it between two fingers, just as he had done, she reached over and put it on the table in front of him. ‘Check-mate,’ she said quietly.

  At that inauspicious moment the landlord came to remove the breakfast paraphernalia and they both hastily picked up the pieces of paper. If the landlord wondered at his two residents being known to one another he said nothing and soon they were alone again. West let the silence stretch as he assessed her. He thought she looked better than the previous day, less fragile and stressed. Cleaner and prettier too, he decided. Perfidious, he reminded himself sharply.

  She held out the scrap of paper he had given her, ‘Where did you get this?’

  He sat back, tilted his chair and answered, ‘It was found in the pocket of our dead body. Is it your husband’s writing?’

  ‘No, that’s his writing,’ she pointed to the paper he held. ‘I found it in the pocket of the jacket I was wearing the day he disappeared. To be honest, it meant nothing to me at the time.’ She caught his sceptical glance. ‘Nothing!’ she repeated angrily, ‘I read it, shoved it back into my pocket and forgot about it until yesterday!’

  He stayed silent and after a moment she continued. ‘I found it in the same pocket but… you know…I still didn’t understand.’ She gave a sad laugh, ‘I had to Google it before it came

  back to me. As soon as I saw Cornwall, of course, I remembered this place and an afternoon we had spent here.’ She stopped, pushed her hair roughly behind her ears, and looked at him intently. ‘Three months I’ve been waiting and wondering. Have you any idea what that is like? The not-knowing eats away at you, demolishes every particle of strength and self-belief,’ her voice quivered and she stopped.

  He waited, knowing there was more.

  She took a shuddering breath and continued, ‘You relive every moment you were together, looking for clues; question and examine every word for tone, for nuance, until you no longer trust any memory, until you try not to remember because every memory might be the key, might be the reason he went and it is just soul destroying. So you try to live each day, waiting all the time for the world to make sense again, but when I go out...’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘... I see him everywhere; every man wearing a certain suit, a certain jacket becomes him. When I turn a corner I search every face in case one is his. I have stopped my car in the middle of traffic, convinced I saw him amongst the crowd. I have accosted total and bemused strangers so many times in so many places. His laugh... he has the most wonderful laugh! I hear it sometimes and I rush to groups of people where I stand and stare, searching for him, their irritation turns to curiosity and pity when I ask them if they have seen him, when I explain that my husband has disappeared. So now I don’t go out unless I have to and even then it doesn’t end.’

  Shades of sorrow flickered across her face, turned down the corners of her full lips and settled in her pale blue eyes. She paused to look out the window and when she resumed the sorrow laced her voice, ‘I was digging in my garden last month. Just moving a bush that had out-grown its place, trying to get on with my life, you know.’ She shrugged. ‘I had to dig quite a large hole to put it in and it was pretty hard going, our soil is so stony, I had to keep stopping to pull them out. It felt really therapeutic, the sun was shining and, for a moment…just one short moment...I wasn’t thinking of Simon.’ She turned her gaze to the view of the garden.

  Gardening was the same for him, he reflected, watching her. In the middle of the most difficult case, no matter how exhausting or complicated, he could spend a few hours or even minutes digging or deadheading or weeding and suddenly he didn’t feel quite so stressed and prickly.

  Kelly pulled her gaze back from the garden and met his. ‘One of my good neighbours rang the police and told them I was digging what looked like a grave. The gardai who called around were very apologetic and one of them even helped me move the bush. But,’ she smiled, ‘It wasn’t quite so relaxing after that.’

  ‘Tell me why you came here,’ West questioned relentlessly, aware of a growing empathy he knew could be dangerous.

  She told him everything.

  West frowned, ‘So this Cyril Pratt stayed here for four weeks?’

  She leaned forward, hands clasped, elbows resting on the table, ‘I think he was waiting for me. He must be in some kind of trouble. He left that note in my pocket and I was supposed to follow him!’

  He looked at her sceptically. ‘What kind of trouble? And why be so cloak and daggerish about it? If he left you the note why wasn’t it more explicit? And when you didn’t turn up why didn’t he contact you?’

  She glared at him in frustration, ‘You’re the bloody detective. You tell me. My life has turned into a bad Agatha Christie novel and I’m just trying to make sense of it! I don’t know why Simon vanished. I don’t know why he is using a different name. I don’t know anything and I am sick and tired of not knowing!’ Her voice rose as she spoke becoming shriller despite her best efforts to keep calm.

  Her raised voice brought the landlord into the room. ‘Everything alright, miss,’ he addressed her, drawing close, glaring at West.

  West answered calmly, ‘We’re fine but some more coffee wouldn’t go amiss.’

  The landlord hesitated, then as Kelly sat back he nodded, delayed his departure by moving a few table and chairs about, and, finally, with a palpable glare at West, he headed off to get the coffee.

  West watched him go in amusement, a smile in his eyes as he turned his attention back to Kelly.

  The smile dimmed quickly as he speculated on her involvement. She sounded like she knew nothing but he had learned, both as a solicitor and a policeman, not to take things at face value.

  ‘Do you know what a Pushaway is, sergeant?’

  West eyed her speculatively; he knew what she was getting at. ‘Someone who is forced to go missing,’ he answered her. ‘I’ve read Malcolm Payne’s typology, as you obviously have. So you think your husband falls into this category?’

  Kelly nodded. ‘I’ve read everything there is to read about missing people, Sergeant. I’ve weighed up every possibility. I knew Simon. He wouldn’t have chosen to leave me. He loved me.’

  ‘Tell me about him,’ West asked quietly.

  She looked at him suspiciously and then taking a deep breath took him back to the beginning, to the first time she had met Simon.

  She had literally bumped into him. She had just been in to see her agent at his office on Baggot Street. ‘I write children’s books,’ she explained. She had come rushing out the front door without looking and barged straight into him. She’d apologised, so had he and that was it, they had gone their separate ways. Then, amazingly, a few hours later, she was coming out of her publishers, a few streets away, and there he was, just passing by. He smiled at her and she had laughed and promised she wouldn’t bump into him this time. And they had stood smiling for a moment and he had suggested a coffee, and they had talked for so long that coffee became dinner.

  ‘He is the kind of person,’ she explained, ‘who’s really easy to talk to. He really listens, you know. I told him things I’d probably never told anyone else, ever. We discovered we had so much in common; we liked the same music, the same type of architecture, the same books. It was amazing. Our first proper date, he took me to a restaurant I had wanted to go to for months. We liked the same kind of food, the same type of wine. It was just so wonderful.’

  Three months later they were married. Shortly after, they found the house of their dreams in Foxrock. It was a vacant possession so things proceeded very quickly and Simon moved in almost immediately. She had stayed a few weeks longer in Drumcondra, finalising the sale of her house there, before joining him. Very little of Kelly’s modern furniture suited the Victorian house they had bought so she had either sold, or given it, to the purchasers of her house. Anything they didn’t want was donated to charity shops or disposed of in the recycling centre.

  They had furnished their new home from local antique shops where their faces quickly became well know
n. They chose wood with the patina of centuries, china with colours so intense they brought tears to Kelly’s eyes, fabric that warmed, not only the house, but their hearts, and warm squashy sofas in which they could sink, late in the evening, to watch the candle and firelight glow. ‘It all fell together so perfectly,’ she murmured softly, her lips curving in a smile of such sweetness that West felt something inside go ping.

  The ensuing silence was broken by the arrival of the landlord with the coffee. He seemed reassured by their silence and set the coffee down without further ado.

  Pouring it for both of them, West added milk to his own and sat back. Kelly added milk and sugar to hers and sat back with a sigh. ‘A very straightforward relationship, you see, Sergeant,’ she commented.

  ‘Mmm,’ he replied noncommittally taking a sip of his coffee. ‘He works as an engineer, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, he does contract work for several companies. He can do quite a lot from home, which is marvellous as I do too. We have our separate offices and meet for lunch and coffee or,’ she smiled, remembering, ‘Just for no reason at all.’

  ‘What kind of engineering?’

  ‘Chemical,’ she replied taking another sip of her coffee, ‘I couldn’t understand a word of it, to be honest.’

  West smiled, ‘Not the kind of stuff you’d put in children’s books, I suppose. He must have earned a good living, though. Contractors tend to be better paid than average.’

  ‘Very well,’ she agreed, nodding. ‘As I’ve said, we had a nice life style. We spent two or three weekends a month away, usually in a Spa or country house hotel, places a little out of the ordinary. Sometimes in Ireland, sometimes in the UK. Simon spent hours on the internet finding lovely old hotels in beautiful settings. Have you ever stayed in Glencot House, Sergeant?’ At his negative shake, she continued, ‘You should some day. It’s at the foot of the Mendip Hills and has to be one of the most romantic places. It’s owned by Miller’s, the antique people, and the decor is stunning. Best of all,’ she grinned disarmingly, ‘You can buy anything that takes your fancy!’ Her grin faded into a smile of reminiscence that lingered as she drifted back to a happier time.