So He Takes the Dog. Jonathan Buckley
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vacancy of the beach. ‘Got a telescope, has she?’
‘I think we must assume that she has.’
‘And I’m blocking the view?’
‘So it would appear.’
Henry’s skin had by now turned the colour of a dead mackerel and his private parts looked like three tiny acorns in a nest of singed grass. He was on the brink of hypothermia but he was talking to Ian as if they had just happened to bump into each other on a street corner. ‘Can’t she look the other way?’
‘It would appear not. Where are your clothes, sir?’ asked Ian, by now alarmed at Henry’s hue.
Henry pointed inland, but Ian could not make out what he was pointing at. Together they walked across the sand, Ian and this shaggy nude lunatic, chatting about the weather. On a low mound of sand there lay a small pile of clothes and a towel that would have done fine for lightly rubbing down a chihuahua after its bath. Ian handed him the tiny towel and Henry took it. He held it in one hand, by his side. They regarded Henry’s meagre wardrobe and the big red nylon bag lying nearby – a laundry sack, which Henry used to sleep in, until someone gave him a proper sleeping bag.
‘Do you have any swimming trunks, sir?’
‘No, I do not,’ Henry regretfully admitted.
The next day Ian bought him a pair of swimming trunks, but before long Mrs D was back on the line, offended again by the exposure of Henry’s genitals. Ian returned to the beach. The wind was Siberian and the waves were going twenty different directions at once. Henry was frolicking in groin-high water, slamming his head in the foam. Summoned, he trudged out of the sea. ‘Henry, you’re underdressed,’ Ian observed. ‘You’re not wearing them.’
At a loss, Henry frowned. ‘What?’
‘Your nice new trunks,’ Ian explained. ‘The trunks I got for you.’
‘Yes?’ Henry responded, still baffled.
‘The trunks I got you last week?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry, the light dawning.
‘You’re not wearing them.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘She’s complained again.’
A blank pause. ‘Who has?’
‘The woman.’
‘The woman?’
‘The lady with the telescope. The one who complained last week. Before we acquired the trunks.’
Long pause. ‘I see.’
‘What’s the problem? Don’t you like them? I thought you liked them.’
‘Oh no. I like them.’
‘So where are they? Over there?’ asked Ian, pointing towards a dash of red on the rocks.
‘Yes,’ Henry confirmed.
‘Why not there?’ asked Ian, pointing to Henry’s nether regions.
‘They’re not dry.’
‘Come again?’
‘It’s a horrible feeling, putting on wet clothes.’
Ian sympathised, but insisted that Henry must make himself decent. This was not to be their last conversation about Henry’s swimwear.
For almost three years Henry was here, but he was in residence intermittently, which is why nobody was worried when he’d been missing for a while. He’d left the town before, for weeks at a time, months at a stretch, so no one thought anything of it. But it was odd that he’d gone missing in winter, because previously it was always in summer that he went away.
The post-mortem established that Henry was not as old as had been thought, probably nearer fifty than sixty, and that he’d been under the sand for a couple of weeks or thereabouts, before the sea scooped him out to lie in the open air, where he’d remained for a day or so before the arrival of Milo. It was also discovered that he had died because someone had inserted a knife into his chest cavity. Examination of his clothing revealed two small slits in the outer T-shirt; in the layer underneath there were two matching slits, and so on, all the way through to the flesh. Decomposition and wildlife activity had made a mess of the flesh itself, but not enough to eradicate wholly the two wounds, which had been inflicted by a thin-bladed weapon held in the attacker’s right hand. One blow had pierced the heart; the other struck a rib, chipping the bone. No signs of defence injuries were discovered on the remnants of his hands, so the attack seemed to have been sudden and brief.
Henry slept on the beach near Straight Point, or in the grass above the cliffs, but most often under the bushes of The Maer, so that’s where we searched for his belongings, though nobody could be sure what belongings there were to find, other than the sleeping bag: the superfluous swimming trunks might have been discarded long ago and it was possible that every item of Henry’s clothing was on his back when he was found. For a whole day a squad combed The Maer in the quest for Henry’s estate, while another squad worked out from the crime scene, looking for a weapon. The next day we began to trawl the whole beach. Come nightfall we’d gathered a few dozen bottles and cans, a couple of camping gas cylinders, three paperbacks, half a deckchair, a syringe, enough driftwood to build a replica of the Golden Hind, and a backpack containing one lady’s hairbrush, one condom (unused), twenty-four pence in loose change and a substantial quantity of sand. And no weapon.
At this stage of a homicide enquiry we should have been talking to the victim’s family, talking to his friends, establishing the patterns of his behaviour, his habits and routines and so on. In this case, however, we were a few hundred yards behind the starting line, because we didn’t yet know the man’s full name. No identification was found on the body, so we had no route to the next of kin, and there were no known friends to interview. We knew something of the pattern of his days – sleep, go for a walk, sleep – but that was the lot. So George Whittam decides to call in the press.
Within the hour Ronnie Houghton arrives at the incident room. For the past couple of years, after a decade in telesales and advertising freesheets, Ronnie has been reporting on the misdemeanours of our district’s druggies, shoplifters, joyriders and after-hours brawlers. He’s thirty or thereabouts but as eager as a twenty-year-old, and just as naïve. One day, he knows, he’s going to get the story that will bring him the big-money transfer to London and a national byline. Eyes twitching at the thought that this might be the big one, Ronnie absorbs the facts, or the selection of facts that George has judged it useful to broadcast at this point. When the battery of his tape recorder goes flat, one minute into the briefing, Ronnie switches to shorthand, scribbling as though he’s taking dictation from God Almighty. A minute later it’s over. Half a page of notes and that’s it. ‘OK. OK,’ says Ronnie, trying not to show his disappointment, perusing his scrawl. ‘OK. I’ve got all that. Got a picture?’ he asks, but of course we haven’t got a picture – that’s one reason he’s here. SHOCK DEATH OF LOCAL CHARACTER is Ronnie’s headline. ‘We’re appealing to the public for information. If anyone out there has a recent picture of Henry, we’d like them to pass it on to us,’ says Detective Chief Inspector Whittan (sic).
That’s on the Saturday, and the next day the Reverend Beal makes his contribution. Gas heaters beside the altar supply a dash of warm colour but no heat that’s perceptible to the congregation. The windows are trickling and the air has a taste like fog. Today, therefore, only the hardcore are in attendance, packed for warmth into the front four pews, except for young Michael Trethowen, also known as Mystic Mike, who’s occupying his traditional berth nearer the back, swaddled in the customary brown duffel coat. Beal moves things along as briskly as is decent, but he takes his time with the sermon. There must be a heater up in the pulpit. It’s a head-numbingly tedious recital on the theme