Cold to the Touch Read online

  Sarah was thinking that the role of a postman was not quite what it had been, with far fewer privileges than in the old days. Once upon a time the postman would know details about every household for as long as he remembered what he delivered. He would know who was away and who was at home, the state of their finances, the identity of their correspondents. He would deliver all the bills and all the birthday cards, invitations, cheques, parcels, et cetera, and would therefore be able to guess, if he chose, who had sent them and what was inside. It was a job she would have liked herself. Electronic communication surely took half the fun out of it, made people’s habits less open to a postman or anyone else. Still, there was plenty left to chew on in Mr J. Dunn’s post.

  It was chilly on the cliff path, would probably be awful in winter. Sarah’s plan to own a dog was under review when she considered the obligation of walking it in all weathers and also because Mr J. Dunn had definitely kept a dog. There had been copious evidence of that in the house he had vacated. The house Sarah had rented stank of dog and desperation and she had visualised a tired old man living there until her examination of the post revealed someone far younger. Not a large dog, the butcher told her. Poor thing, it went mad in there, never got enough exercise, he drove away and left it all day: you could hear it barking. She guessed Mr Dunn had not been popular. I wouldn’t know, the butcher said, never knew him to talk to, he shopped here, a bit for bones and I would see him drag that dog out occasionally, not often enough, even though he loved it to death. Neglected dogs like that can get vicious. Then they get feral and no one can catch them, not even Jeremy.

  She had met Jeremy, the butcher’s assistant, once. Jeremy was plain, surly and vulnerable, the type she warmed to at once. He was another sort of male creature who touched her soul, like the hapless vicar, although the vicar was blessed with infinitely superior looks. The butcher’s shop was the real heart of the village. Sarah had seen his white van creeping downhill from the fields beyond, disappearing into the trees and out again. Since the recent demise of the Post Office/Newsagent, the butcher and the next-door hairdresser were the pivotal information points, surely, but the butcher most of all.

  She read J. Dunn’s letters with interest, resisting the temptation to let them fly away in the breeze. The first was a notice of a medical appointment; the second a communication informing J. Dunn that he was on a debtors’ register for non-payment of something and the third was a handwritten envelope containing nothing and addressed to J. DUNN DECEASED. The postman had still delivered it.

  Ah, my dears, Sarah said to herself. It’s as well that I need you more than you need me. I do not wish to be needed. Wanted? Interested? That was another matter. I have a slight unofficial mission to begin to reconcile Jessica with her obviously estranged mother whom she has not seen since she left, and although she has not specifically asked me to do that I have a feeling that it’s what she wants me to do. She wants me to find out things she cannot tell anyone, and yet she can’t demand it. Otherwise I have no moral obligations to do anything other than to BE. Thus there is only one family I want to know about and that’s Jessica’s lot. No, I lie: I want to know about them all, but they are slow to tell me. One moves slowly here and there is plenty of time, especially when you have made a vow only to look at your e-mail once a week and rely on verbal communication. I’m doing fine, fat and lazy. Sarah’s dear, anarchic friend Mike, who had carried her here, reluctantly, in a borrowed white van had said she would never last the hectic pace. You’ll go mad, doll. She missed him most of all, more than any of the other lovers; missed his reckless and nicely opportunistic way of life as well as his knowledge of an alternative world, but she was determined to prove him wrong. Call any time, doll. I’m always there for you. She had not called. He was one of the reasons she had wanted to leave, because she was at risk of needing him. It was confusing to need someone you could never quite trust.

  It was nine-thirty when Sarah saw the single police car, visible through the winter trees, stopping in the vicinity of the shops she could not see. There was a tingle of excitement from seeing such an urban thing as a police car. Maybe someone had come to find Mr J. Dunn and his dog. She turned her back on the village and faced the sea. This, after all, was what she thought she had come to find. The rest could wait.

  PC Chapman opened the door of the butcher’s shop and found him alone, save for the omnipresence of dead meat. His eyes went straight to the back wall.

  ‘What a beast!’

  ‘Yeah, big fella, once.’

  ‘Big all over.’

  ‘Heavy, for sure.’

  ‘Never seen anything like it.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever been for a walk, then, and seen a cow in a field?’

  ‘Scarcely.’

  The butcher nodded. ‘That figures. Blokes like you drive round in cars and only get out when you’ve run someone over. Or when someone else has, right?’ He shook his head, mournfully, taking any slight sting out of his words by smiling and pointing. ‘I tell you what, son, do you think you could move that car of yours before we have a riot round here? Only it’s rush hour. Pull it in next to the van, for God’s sake. We’re not due a lynching for at least another month.’

  The policeman nodded and went out and moved the car so that it stood next to the butcher’s van on the narrow apron outside the shop. Parking it next to the van somehow diminished his own vehicle and made it look domestic. In the time that took, Mr Sam Brady flung a pile of meaty offcuts into the mincer, knowing that all he had to do if he did not feel sociable when the bloke came back was turn the damn thing on and drown him out with the noise. The visitor was only a copper from town and he hadn’t made an appointment. Nothing urgent, anyway, otherwise there would surely be two of them. The policeman came back, stood and stared at the rear wall of the shop where the two quarters of beef hung on the rail, waiting attention. His eyes had glazed over in lustful admiration. Definitely a meat eater, then, because he was looking at the hind quarters of a well-hung carcass as if he wanted to stroke it, like a hungry man looking at a pole dancer, jangling the coins in his pocket.

  The beef quarters were enormous. Sam could see the cop gauging the heaviness of each as they hung suspended from those useful S-shaped hooks on the steel rail, the hook piercing the buttock of the thing, taking the weight at the top and letting it hang, tapering through the leg bones to a blunt end. No hooves. A well-hung piece of beef was beautifully coloured, from the off-white of the fat to the ruddy brown and dark red of the meat, the colours harmonious and easy on the eye. Could have made wall paint for fancy houses, nice old colours from this kind of palette. The meat tones were the same as the complexion of Sam’s face and hands, ruddy brown to white to the rusty red of his nose. God bless that nose of yours, his wife told him: you can smell what’s rotten from fifty metres, and so he could, just as he could smell trouble and knew that there was none, just at the moment. As long as the copper hadn’t come about Jeremy. Sam showed his age, calling a policeman a copper.

  The shop smelled sweet, as it always did. Cleanliness was next to godliness; the lack of it was ruin. At the back of the shop was a kitchen area, including sink, kettle, oven, the other chopping board, dry stores, and the sacred cathedral of the chiller. The policeman cleared his throat and shook his head, still lost in admiration.

  ‘You don’t get this where I live. All local meat, is it?’

  Sam winked. ‘I like people to think so. This one isn’t. Local as in Argentina via London. Cheaper.’

  Sam took a knife from the rack and laid it next to the board. Then he picked up the axe.

  ‘Anything I can do you for?’

  Thwack, thwack, thwack.

  Three chickens on the board were suddenly halved. Sam threw them on a tray. The policeman pointed. Pointing was rude.

  ‘That big-fella beef. Shouldn’t it be in the fridge?’

  ‘You mean the chiller? No. It’s been in the chiller for three weeks. One degree above freezing. Took it out this mo
rning. Want a feel? Solid as rock. Got to warm up a bit before I take it apart. ’Swhy I’m messing around with chickens and sausage. Lots to do today, got to get ready for the weekend rush. Not much custom yet, plenty of work. What did you want?’

  The policeman laughed. He wasn’t as young as he looked. ‘All of it,’ he said. ‘Rump, sirloin, stewing steak. As long as it’s beef.’

  ‘You can’t afford it.’

  They both admired the magnificent hindquarters hooked to the rail. They were easy with each other, but not quite. Sam relaxed. It wasn’t about Jeremy. The policeman spread his hands in mock surrender.

  ‘I’ll settle for a kilo of the Cumberland sausage and ask you to answer a question. The sausages because you’re a proper butcher, and the question because some old biddy uphill said you know everything. I’ll pay cash for the meat, and do you know how I find someone called J. Dunn? Only it’s a warren round here, and someone said he lived in one place, and someone said another, so I don’t know where I am.’

  ‘And we’re all supposed to be interrelated and know where everyone lives, are we? Well, we aren’t and we don’t. Even I don’t live here, although I was born here. What’s he done?’

  ‘Look, I just deliver the brown envelope, telling him to go to court. Even if I knew, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.’

  The butcher grinned without any meeting of eyes.

  ‘Parking, I’ll bet. The only fines round here are for parking or the TV licence. Or maybe it’s about that dog of his. He was ever a careless young man. He used to come in for bones.’

  Sam was not going to say anything else. He reached into the display counter and impaled a row of sausages darker in colour then their more pallid counterparts on adjoining trays. The colour of them reminded him of brown mottled carpet, and he could smell the herbs. Next to the Cumberland were other trays of diced beef, minced lamb, red rump steak and a large fillet of beef that looked as old as shoe leather. The window display was empty, waiting to be filled. Jeremy would do the bulk of the sausages tomorrow or Wednesday. The kilo was lifted in a single fat thread and fell plumply onto a sheet of greaseproof paper plucked by the butcher with his other hand. The whole place smelled so wholesome and the policeman shuffled his feet, feeling the sawdust underfoot. Sweet-smelling and bloodless, as if the blood had been absorbed and already digested. PC Chapman shopped in supermarkets, grazing amongst the pre-packed joints to find anything that might suit a carnivorous appetite created by his old mother’s stocks and stews. He liked the clean raw smell, hadn’t been in an old-fashioned butcher’s shop in years and could not remember the ones of his childhood smelling like this. He sniffed: apples from the basket in the corner; lemons from the bowl on the counter; rosemary in bunches ready to use with the lamb. He did not know what all the smells were, only that he liked them as well as the sight of the sawdust on the floor and he was still looking round, sniffing like a bloodhound and unaware of looking ridiculous when the wrapped sausages were dumped on the counter in front of him. Never knew this place existed and, come to think of it, most people in the nearest town didn’t know either. No call to come to Pennyvale on a daily or weekly basis, no police station, no community cop, no law enforcer other than the traffic warden, no need. Just peace and quiet and good meat. He felt envious and ignorant and also superior.

  ‘So, do you know where this J. Dunn lives, then?’ he asked, fishing in his pockets for money.

  Sam shook his head, took down a knife from the rack behind him and began to sharpen it. Such a thin blade it had, out of all proportion to the handle, as if it had shrunk from being an axe and transformed itself into a dissecting tool, capable of cutting the most delicate of slices. Chapman glanced at the wall behind the counter. There was an arsenal of knives.

  ‘Nope, and I never did, not really. I know he’s a daft lad and he was renting from Mrs Hurly, up Benham Lane, behind the church, but I never knew the name of the house. Never delivered there, see? He only came in for bones for the bloody dog, see? I might know customers, but I don’t know everybody. That’ll be five pounds ninety-five. We take cards.’

  Not cheap – blatant overcharging. Chapman sorted out the exact money, counting it carefully. Sam put it in the till and wiped his hands on the front of his apron. He was far cleaner than a doctor, although his white overall bore signs of the last carcass he had embraced en route from the chiller at the back to the rail at the front.

  ‘Only I reckon you’re out of luck, anyway. Wherever he lived, he moved, months ago. I heard he got a job driving lorries or vans, up north or somewhere. There’s a woman lives there now. She rents the place, like he did, but she hasn’t got a dog. I mean, that poor bloody dog. Wasn’t its fault it bit people. Any road, he’s gone, that’s for sure. Probably took the bloody dog and went. Doubt if he was paid up on anything, either. Might be a few more summonses and that. I reckon he was one of them refugees – from divorce, I mean, quite a few of those hiding out round here. Usually a lot older than that, though.’

  Sam’s gaze towards the wall was guileless. He was restless, gazing at the hindquarters with longing, and PC Chapman was immediately suspicious, until he thought he realised the reason for the butcher’s preoccupation. The man wanted to start work on that hunk of meat, itching to make the first cut. Chapman thought he would think twice about making a complaint in this shop, what with Brady’s high complexion and all those knives.

  ‘Don’t you lot ever do joined-up thinking? I mean, does right hand know what left hand’s doing? Dunn kept his mad dog until the order came through that it had to be destroyed. One of your blokes came out to fetch it with a special van and everything, only he was too late as well. Don’t you talk to each other?’

  ‘There seems,’ PC Chapman said, resorting to police-speak and backing away, ‘to have been a breakdown in communications.’

  After the police car had pulled away, Sam hoisted the first hindquarter off the hook and over his shoulder and then let it drop on the block. He liked cutting meat in the open shop with everyone seeing what he was doing, not only because it was skilful and he was proud of it but because it helped his reputation as a totally professional above-board kind of man. What you saw was what you got when it came to both butcher and meat. But dammit, it was still too soon to have at this hulk. It had only been out of the chiller for two hours, still solid as a rock, and he could not make an impression in the fat with the full force of his thumbs. It remained impervious to touch and inflexible and suddenly he did not want to touch it at all. He almost wanted the copper to come back. Where were customers when you needed them for distraction, for a joke, for a time-wasting chat about politics or the weather or golf or fishing? Where was Jeremy with his freshly killed rabbits and funny eyes like a sheep’s, and where was that shy new foreign bloke delivering all the way from Smithfield at whatever hour of the day or night suited him? Trustworthy, got the orders right, but not much of a joker, not like the old one. Sam was feeling shaky. He checked the front door: there was no one in sight. Then he went backstage to the chiller.

  The machinery rattled loudly as he pulled open the heavyweight door to a small room. One big walk-in super-cold refrigerator, pantry size. Half full or half empty, whichever way you looked at it. No Health and Safety inspections due for a good while yet. Two headless pigs hung up by the feet in halves, neatly split down the spine. The wholesale stuff on the shelves at the side, duck breasts, chickens in boxes, smaller joints of lamb to the left, strings of sausages hanging in a curtain. Sam pushed his way through those to the back, just to check if it was still there, drying out nicely.

  There she was, in her own corner, quite apart from the rest.

  J. Dunn’s dog, vacuum-packed. One medium-sized, insufficiently desiccated, shrink-wrapped sanitised dead bitch, awaiting collection and decent burial.

  Now, was anyone ever going to believe that a man like him could be so sentimental about roadkill?

  He shut the door on the chilling room and sighed. Not much custom yet and not
much help, either. He would have all the time to chat to Mrs Hurly when she came in.

  Poor old bitch.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dear S,

  I’m leaving you this e-mail in the hope you won’t read it. (You said you were going to leave the laptop under the bed.) I’ll probably delete it, anyway. Not good to send e-mails when you don’t even know what day of the week it is. I’m doing what you suggested, writing things down in order to think them through, never was much good at writing, though. Too slow, but it’s very late and there’s nothing else to do until it gets light.

  I went back to DK, nicely, in the afternoon. It’s no use, I can’t keep away. I can’t help the fact that I smile when I know I’m going to see him and I can’t get out of the habit of storing up things to tell him. I bought him flowers, he loves flowers and what’s wrong with bringing a man flowers? I know the effect they have on me, they turn me into putty.

  You should see him, Sarah. What a figure! If you saw him you’d see what I mean.

  I wasn’t drunk. I just wanted to give him my gift, say I was sorry for whatever I did wrong the last time, tell him I’d talked about him to a friend (you) who made me see sense. Told me that you can’t make a person love you, you can only make him respect you, so could he respect my feelings for him? Could we be friends?

  Then he went ballistic, because I’d talked about him to someone else. It maddened him, how dare I discuss him? Whatever there had been between us was a secret and I was a silly tart, a blabbermouth and he was ashamed of me. He shoved the flowers back into my face and pushed me out. Get this woman out, he said. There was the man there and he got the man to shove me, couldn’t bear to touch me himself. Get her out of here, he said: she can’t afford to pay. The man was laughing.

  I went, but I was crying so much I could scarcely see the way.