“Love affair? No.” Wilfred Coulson’s eyes blazed into life. “That was not love.”
“Oh? But… Dimity very much seems to think otherwise…”
“What she thinks and what is what don’t always match up,” the old man muttered.
“What do you think was between them, if you don’t think it was love?” Zach asked, but Wilfred Coulson only frowned, looking past Zach into the dark interior of the pub, and a sudden wave of sadness engulfed his face. “That was not love,” he repeated; then he turned and walked unsteadily away from the building, leaving Zach to puzzle over this adamant declaration.
It was early in the evening but Zach’s stomach was growling, so he ordered his dinner and sat down in what was becoming his regular spot, on an upholstered bench beneath a west-facing window, looking into the heart of the village. He was waiting for his computer to boot up when a bark of male laughter filled the room and a group of four men sauntered in. Zach didn’t pay them any attention until Pete Murray put both sets of his knuckles on the bar and braced his arms resolutely.
“Gareth, you know I’m not going to serve you, so why bother coming in?” he said.
“What? You’re telling me I’m still barred? That was bloody months ago!” said a skinny man with a gaunt, ageless face and glittering eyes. He could have been twenty, or forty; his expression was one of deep distrust and disaffection. Behind him was a huge bulk of a man, tall and bearded, and wearing a faded lilac sweatshirt that looked oddly endearing on his huge frame. Sitting as close as he was, Zach could see the haze of grime on the garment. The quartet all carried the faint smell of unwashed clothes and fish.
“Barred is barred, until I say you’re not barred.”
“Well, are you going to say it or what?” The thin man leaned menacingly towards the bar. Beside him, the huge lilac man loomed, his brows pulled so low they almost covered his eyes.
“You’re barred,” said Pete Murray, and Zach admired the steady tone of his voice. “Go somewhere else.”
Conversations around the bar fell silent as the four men stayed where they were for a hung moment. Then the thin man thrust his hands into his pockets and turned away, knots writhing at the sharp corners of his jaw.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” he snapped at a pair of middle-aged women as he passed their table, and they exchanged a startled expression above their white-wine spritzers.
“Sorry about that, ladies. How about another, on the house?” said the publican, once the four men had left.
“Who were those guys?” Zach asked as Pete brought over his food a short while later. The landlord sighed.
“They’re pretty harmless, really. Well, I think they are. Fatty and skinny are James and Gareth Horne. They’re brothers, fishermen, both of them. I don’t know the other two-just mates of theirs, I suppose. But the Horne brothers-well, every village has its tearaways, doesn’t it? When they were kids it was graffiti, sniffing glue, getting drunk and smashing up the telephone box. Once they started going out to work on the boats they calmed down a bit, but then there were rumors of more serious drugs, and back in the spring I caught Gareth dealing to some youngsters out the back here. They cleared off and got rid of it before the police caught up with them, but they’re barred for life as far as I’m concerned.”
“They sound lovely.”
“Give them a wide berth, that’d be my advice,” said Pete.
When Zach finally managed to log in to his e-mail, he found a message from Paul Gibbons at the auction house in London, which he opened eagerly. After a brief preamble, Paul wrote that the buyer of one of the previous Dennis pictures, a Mrs. Annie Langton, happened to be an old family friend and would be happy to meet him and let him look at the picture; he gave her contact details. Zach checked his watch. It was still only seven in the evening, not too late to call somebody. As usual, his mobile phone had no signal, so he fed coins into the pub’s pay phone, and rang Annie Langton straightaway. She sounded elderly but bright, and very well-to-do, and he arranged to visit her on the following Thursday. She lived in Surrey, and Zach used the postcode she’d given him to pull up some online directions. It would take him a good two and a half hours to drive it, and he silently wished that it would be worth it. There was something to be found, he knew. He could feel it in his gut; an ill-defined but unmistakable sense of something amiss, like entering a familiar room and finding the furniture moved. He prayed that whatever it was, he would find it in Annie Langton’s picture of Dennis.
CHAPTER SIX
Dimity stood and stared. There was a car parked outside Littlecombe; a flawless deep blue with flowing black arches sweeping over the front wheels and a bright metal grille gleaming at the front. A wholly different thing to the battered, muddy old machines that usually went rattling through Blacknowle, or the wide, ungainly buses that ran east and west along the top road, belching clouds of black smoke behind them. This car looked like it belonged in a fairy story, or one of the movies Wilf went to see occasionally, on visits to his uncle in Wareham; returning with stories of vastly wealthy men and graceful women in silk gowns living in a world so clean and lovely that nobody ever cursed or got ill. Dimity peered through the window. The seats were of deep brown leather, with neat rows of stitching. She longed to run her hands over them, put her nose up close and inhale the scent of them. There were some sprigs of cow parsley caught under the left corner of the front bumper, and Dimity bent to remove them, wiping away the smears of green juice with her fingertips. In the curving, mirrored metal, her reflection stared back at her, warped and misshapen. A flash of hazel eyes and knotted bronze hair; a smudged face and a scab on her lip made by one of Valentina’s fingernails, which had caught her as she’d dodged a blow.
“Quite a beauty, isn’t she?” said a voice close at hand. Dimity knew it at once, and she caught her breath. Charles. She whirled around and stepped away from the car.
“I wasn’t doing nothing! Only looking!” she gasped. Charles smiled and held out his hands.
“It’s all right, Mitzy! You can look. If you like, I’ll take you for a drive sometime.” He stepped forwards and pressed a brief kiss onto her cheek. “You look well. It’s nice to see you again.” He said it calmly, as though he didn’t know that their reunion was the one thing she’d dreamed of for ten long months. Charles looked past her at the car, his expression one of guilt and rapture. Dimity couldn’t speak. His kiss was burning into her skin, and she put up her hand in case she might be able to feel the wound. “I shouldn’t covet this car so. It’s only a machine. But then, can’t a machine, can’t something man-made, also be a thing of beauty?” He spoke almost to himself, running his fingers along the roof of the car with a rapt expression.
“It’s the most beautiful car I ever saw,” Dimity managed to say, breathlessly. Charles smiled, glancing at her appraisingly.
“You like it, eh? It’s brand-new. A friend of mine got his up to sixty miles an hour! Sixty! It’s an Austin Ten-the new Cambridge model. Twenty-one brake horsepower; four-cylinder, side-valve engine…” He trailed off, reading the utter incomprehension in her face. “Never mind. I’m glad you like it. I wasn’t even sure I needed a car. It was Celeste’s idea really, but now that I have it I can’t remember how I managed without. It seems so outmoded and restrictive to rely on trains and taxis. With a car, the world is your oyster. You can go anywhere, at any time.” He paused and looked over at her, but Dimity could think of nothing else to say about it. She could see that he expected her to, and felt desperation making her throat clog up and heat build at the top of her nose. “Well, I’ll take you for a drive soon, I promise. Go on into the house-Delphine’s been dying to see you.”