Butterfly Grave (Murder Notebooks) (16 page)

Joshua looked back at the policeman.

‘Knife?’

‘Yep. It’s with forensics.’

Joshua looked ashen. He stared into space and then seemed startled to see the others coming towards them. Martin was the first to reach them.

‘Josh, mate. I can’t believe it.’

The others followed. Rose saw that Rory hung back, a few metres away and began to fiddle with the scene-of-crime tape. Joshua seemed not to know who Martin was and Martin frowned at Rose.

‘We only heard this morning. We were out of it last night and an hour ago I got a text from my mate, Roger, who heard about it from his old man who’s a porter in the hospital.’

Rose nodded, her mouth too dry to speak. Martin put his hand out to Joshua but then drew it back. Joshua just stared at Rory Spenser who had his back to them. A ringtone sounded. It was a pop song, loud and raucous and it made everyone, even the policeman, turn round. It was Rory’s phone. He took it out and answered the call, his voice as casual as if he were standing in a queue for the supermarket till, not in front of a crime scene.

‘Oh hi!’ he said. ‘What you up to?’

Joshua tensed, his jaw rigid.

‘Josh,’ Martin said, stepping towards him.

But Joshua had sprung, his big coat flying out. He ran towards Rory Spenser and jumped on his back, pushing him forward face down on the ground. There was a grunting sound and then Rory’s phone shot out of his hand and skidded along the road. Rose was shocked. Joshua was punching the side of Rory’s head.

‘Oi!’ the policeman shouted.

Martin and one of the others went across and took hold of Joshua’s arms and dragged him off Rory. Rory scrabbled to his feet and backed away, holding his jaw, scooping up his phone as he went.

Joshua shook free and stood unsteadily. The policeman walked across to Rory and spoke quietly. Rory shrugged his shoulders and walked off. The policeman came back to Joshua.

‘I don’t want to arrest you, mate. I can see you’re all over the place. Get off home now. Calm down.’

Joshua looked at Martin.

‘He was stabbed, Marty.’

‘Mate, I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say.’

‘I know Spenser had something to do with this.’

Martin began to shake his head.

‘You tell him to watch his back because when I’m absolutely sure I’ll come for him. This time he’ll pay properly for what he’s done.’

Martin didn’t answer. He looked down at Joshua’s coat. Joshua’s eyes dropped and focused on the stain as if he was seeing it for the first time. It seemed to appal him and he pulled at the buttons and shook the coat off. Then he bundled it up and threw it on the ground and walked away.

‘He’s lost it,’ Martin said quietly. ‘There’s no way Rory would do this. No way.’

Martin beckoned his friends and they went in the direction that Rory had gone moments earlier. Rose looked at Joshua’s coat on the ground. She bent down and picked it up then she followed him home.

SEVENTEEN

Rose placed Joshua’s coat on a chair in the kitchen.

Distressed, she looked around. The table was covered in stuff that had not been put away over the previous couple of days – cups, glasses, plates and papers. By the door was Poppy’s bowl with half-eaten food in it. Her water bowl was almost empty and there was something floating there. It made Rose’s stomach turn slightly. The sink had dirty dishes in it and the milk had been left out on the side.

She walked into the living room. Her duvet was on the sofa and there were clothes of hers that she’d left over the armchair. There were glasses on the mantelpiece from two nights before. The room smelled fusty and she saw the remains of toast on a plate on top of the TV.

How had it got like this?

From upstairs she heard the sound of Joshua moving around. She stood still and listened. The door slammed as he went into his uncle’s bedroom. Then she heard the sound of things being dropped one after the other. She flinched as they thudded on to the floor above her.

She ran up the stairs.

‘Josh?’ she called.

She opened the door.

He was standing in the middle of the room. All the desk drawers had been pulled out and dropped on the floor. The filing cabinet drawers were hanging open and it looked as though their files had been scooped out and chucked.

‘Go away, Rose,’ Joshua said, without looking at her. ‘I need to be on my own.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Go away.’

‘I can’t.’

‘GO AWAY, ROSE,’ he shouted at her.

She stood her ground. He glared at her for a few seconds then he seemed to shrink back. His voice had an unnatural calm when he spoke.

‘I’m getting rid of it all. All this stuff, all this crap that I’ve had my head into for the last few days. Ever since I heard that Stu called out Dad’s name I’ve been obsessed with it.’

‘That’s understandable . . .’

‘I’ve thought of nothing else.’

‘I know . . .’

‘And you know why?’

‘You were trying to work out what happened to Stu on the cliff.’

‘No. I was trying to work my way back to the notebooks. This accident, him falling over the side of the cliff, that wasn’t enough for me to deal with. I thought I was trying to work out what happened but the moment I heard Dad’s name, the second there was a reason to go back to Dad and Kathy’s disappearance I focused on that. I turned the house upside down. I couldn’t think of anything else.’

‘You thought it might give a clue to what happened to Stuart.’

‘No, Rose. I didn’t. The minute I thought I could stop thinking about what happened on the cliff I dropped it. Just like when I went to London in September I never came back for a weekend. Not once. Stu must have thought . . .’

Joshua leant on the extended drawer of the filing cabinet.

‘Josh, this has been so hard for you . . .’

‘I just dropped him. He cared for me . . . At least I thought he did. I thought I knew him but . . .’

Rose stepped forward. She put her hand on his shoulder and it felt hot. He shook it off.

‘Nothing you can say can change the way I’ve been. Stu was my dad for five years but that wasn’t enough for me. I wanted my real dad. Remember him? The guy who faked his own disappearance, the one who left me on my own.’

‘Josh.’

He was shaking, his jaw trembling. Rose took a step up to him and pulled him away from the filing cabinet. She put her arms around him. She hugged him tightly but he was rigid, the muscles in his back tense. It felt as if he was paralysed.

‘Josh, Josh,’ she whispered, soothing.

‘But that’s not the worst,’ he said, shaking her off, stepping across the debris on the floor, walking out of the room. ‘I dragged Skeggs into it.’

She followed him. He went into his room and sat on the bed, his legs apart, his elbows on his knees, looking down at the floor, like he’d done in the hospital the previous night. She leant against his door. She’d seen him upset before but now there was a kind of hysteria in his words. After a few seconds he spoke again, his throat thick with emotion.

‘I pulled Skeggsie into it. He wasn’t unwilling but I made it a big part of his life. I leant on him completely and never once did I step back and ask myself whether he wouldn’t be better moving on. He’s had this new mate at college, Eddie? You’ve heard him talk about him?’

Rose nodded.

‘There’ve been times when I knew he was going to some gig or meeting Eddie and I said,
Oh, not tonight, Skeggs, mate, I thought we could work on the notebooks.
I pulled him back. I liked the fact that he was my sounding board, my
confidant
.’

‘He liked it too.’

‘I know. We had a sort of unspoken bargain. We were like brothers only not related but we were bound together by stuff. He was my . . .’

Joshua trembled and Rose stepped forward but he held his hand up in front of him to keep her back.

‘I took my eye off the ball,’ he said through tears. ‘We came up here and I knew there was history here for Skeggs but I was so wound up in all this, I was so busy with all this . . .’

‘He
insisted
on being involved.’

‘Ever since we got up here it’s been Stu this, Stu that and then back to the notebooks, back to the old obsession. Never mind that someone had decided to settle old scores with Skeggs. I couldn’t see it. I was too busy.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘It is my fault, Rose. You don’t get it. I look out for Skeggs.’ He stood up and began to pace up and down. ‘Not down in London – there, he’s OK – but when he’s up here no one touches him. Everyone knows. Anything happens to him they deal with me, that’s how it’s been for years.’

Rose thought of the previous night in the pub smoking area. Skeggsie had told Joshua then
You have to let me fight my own battles, mate.

‘I’ll find out who’s done this,’ he said, walking up to the wall and slamming the side of his fist into it. ‘I won’t rest till I find out.’

She walked up behind him. She put her hands on his elbows. She guided him back to the bed.

‘You’re exhausted. You can’t think straight about this until you’ve rested.’

He let himself be manhandled and sat down on the bed. Then he seemed to weaken and lean against her.

‘Lie down.’

He did what she said. She took his boots off then pulled the duvet over.

‘Try and sleep, just for a few hours.’

He grabbed her hand.

‘Don’t leave me, Rosie . . .’

She frowned and looked down at him. He looked so lost, so battered. She took off her own boots and her jumper and got in beside him. She turned on her side so that he was against her back. He hugged her and she felt him kissing her hair. She pulled the duvet up and they both lay there, clamped together.

Somewhere in the distance she thought she could hear church bells and she remembered, before she went to sleep, that it was Christmas Day.

When she woke up it was dark. She was hot, the duvet up to her nose. She realised then that she was on her own. Joshua had got up. She turned over and the whole awful thing came back to her. Skeggsie was dead. She pulled her knees up and hugged herself. A few days ago she had been convinced that things were as bad as they could get. How could she have known then that they had darker places to go?

She thought back to the previous night. It had been a mess, everyone feeling out of sorts. Skeggsie had been on edge, especially when Rory Spenser came into the pub. Joshua arrived, wound up by the discovery of his uncle’s letter to the solicitor. Then there had been the horrible scene in the pub smoking area. Joshua enraged at Rory Spenser, the row with Skeggsie who had said
Sometimes it’s like you two are the only people in the world who’ve ever felt loss.
Skeggsie had thrown his lot in with Joshua. He’d been happy to put aside his own life to pursue their search. But in doing that his life had been disregarded.

After all the arguing and fighting and hurt feelings he’d gone out of the pub to get Joshua and bring him back. He’d slipped out of the noise and the lights and beery atmosphere into the cold night. He’d headed for Joshua’s house, no doubt sidestepping partygoers. He’d turned off the Promenade and somehow he’d been drawn into the alleyway between the shops.

Rose closed her eyes tightly.

She and Joshua knew loss but this was different. Skeggsie had been so close, so near. She’d seen him moments before it had happened. It almost seemed as though she could have put her hand out and stopped him. Maybe she could have said,
I’ll come too. We’ll walk together.
Or she could have persuaded Skeggsie to give Joshua time.
Come and play some darts
, she could have said,
Josh’ll come round
. And he did come round. Joshua’s anger had fallen away and he’d come back to the pub.

The door opened and light poked into the room.

‘Rose,’ Joshua whispered, ‘I phoned the hospital and left a message for my uncle. I just said there’d been an accident.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Now I’m taking Poppy for a walk.’

‘Wait for me,’ she said. ‘I want to come.’

She staggered up, out of the warm bed, picked up her jumper and boots and stumbled towards the bathroom. She rinsed her face for the second time that day. She combed her fingers through her hair and went downstairs. Joshua was waiting by the front door. He was wearing the leather bomber jacket that he’d bought for his uncle as a Christmas present. It gave her a start to look at it. It made her think of his other coat gory with blood.

‘What time is it?’ she said.

‘Five o’clock.’

It seemed later. She put her coat on and Joshua held a scarf out for her to wrap round her neck. Then he opened the front door. A veil of snow wafted in and she did her coat up and stepped outside into it. The cold air woke her up and she walked quickly to keep pace with Joshua. He pulled Poppy across and held her lead with one hand. With the other he grasped hers and pulled it into the pocket of the bomber jacket. She held his hand tightly.