Plots and Errors Read online

  ‘Isn’t this weather gorgeous?’ she said from under the straw hat, and stretched like a drowsy Siamese cat, not an ounce of spare flesh on her body. ‘We could be in the south of France.’ She removed the hat, and smiled. ‘Why don’t you just head her out, skipper?’

  Josh reached out a sun-tanned arm, and patted the deck-rail of the compact little boat that had been built in the Sixties for the Monte Carlo set, and could outrun some speedboats if you gave her her head. ‘She’d get us there,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid it would add maritime twocking to my list of criminal activities.’

  ‘What’s twocking?’ She sat up again, putting the hat back on her head, her close-cropped dark hair no defence against the sun.

  ‘It’s an acronym. Taking without the owner’s consent.’

  She smiled, as though at the discovery of a new word, but Josh knew her a lot better than she thought he did, knew that she was no stranger to street-slang. She was very good, though. You would never guess.

  She frowned slightly then. ‘But I thought Paul told me it was your boat.’

  ‘Nope. It belongs to my stepmother. I don’t have the money to buy boats. I don’t have any money at all. Except what I make doing this, and most of that goes on upkeep.’

  ‘How come your mother’s rich and your brother’s rich, and you’ve got no money?’ She reached down and picked up a packet of sandwiches.

  He felt a flash of anger, not at the question, but at the terminology. ‘My stepmother’s rich, and my half-brother’s rich,’ he corrected, then the smile returned, to be chased away again by her next question.

  ‘What happened to your own mother?’

  ‘She died.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  She unpeeled the packet, and they ate their sandwiches in silence. Most of the other occupants of the harbour were away having lunch or eating picnic-style on deck as they were, and the boats themselves seemed to be taking a breather, sitting dozing in the sun, nudging one another occasionally when some more energetic craft’s slipstream disturbed the surface of the water. The constant little creaks and groans that boats at rest made could be heard in the quiet little harbour, like the settling of a house at night. Josh helped himself to some biscuits and Brie.

  ‘Have I offended you?’

  ‘No,’ said Josh.

  She looked at him a little speculatively. ‘If I’m supposed to be your girlfriend, perhaps I should know a bit about you,’ she said.

  He smiled. ‘Fire away.’

  ‘What list of criminal activities?’

  ‘Too late,’ said Josh. ‘If you didn’t already know, that would have been your first question.’

  She smiled again, shielding her eyes as she looked up at him. ‘Paul said you’d been in trouble with the police since you were thirteen. And that you’d finally gone to prison when you were twenty-one. He didn’t say what for.’

  ‘I shot someone dead.’ He watched for her reaction. The wide-eyed surprise was something he was used to, but there was more than just surprise in those dark blue eyes. There was something very like respect, and he had never seen that before in response to his oft-repeated history.

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Honestly. They reduced the charge in my case to manslaughter. But the other guy was found guilty of murder. He got life, I got eight years. I served six and a bit, and I got out just over eight years ago.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘Prison?’

  She shook her head, smiling slightly. ‘Killing someone,’ she said.

  Josh grew even more interested in her. She had dismissed the victim of his crime as easily as he had; there had been no shock, no desire to see remorse that he didn’t feel, but which he had professed with some success at his trial. ‘It was very easy,’ he said. ‘We were robbing a petrol station, I had a gun, and bang. He was dead.’ He shrugged. ‘It was like . . . being God, or something. But I didn’t mean to kill anyone.’

  ‘Maybe neither does God.’

  More quiet clicks and bumps as the boats stirred in their sleep, and another silence fell, which she broke.

  ‘How old were you when your mother died?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘And when your father remarried?’

  ‘Five. The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables, you might say.’

  She smiled a little. ‘What’s that from?’

  ‘Hamlet.’

  ‘How did your stepmother meet your father?’

  ‘He came here to dive. She lived here then – she still has a cottage here.’ He jerked his thumb in the general direction of his stepmother’s weekend retreat, and Sandie twisted round to look where he had pointed, but you couldn’t see the cottage properly from the harbour, not now that the town had been built up. Only the sunshine glinting on the red-tiled roof marked out the cottage now, and he directed her gaze towards that.

  ‘Does she let it out, or what?’ Sandie asked.

  ‘No. When Paul and I were young it was used as a holiday cottage. After he retired, she and my father used it as a base in the summer, and went walking on the moors. Now, she uses it at the weekends so she can keep an eye on me.’

  Sandie looked puzzled. ‘Keep an eye on you?’ she repeated.

  ‘My father asked her to keep an eye on me, so that’s what she does, even though I’m sure she’d much rather not. She runs me down on Friday evening and takes me back Sunday lunchtime. To be fair to her, I think she might have worked at the cottage anyway, so she’s just helping me save on petrol, really. But she did make him a promise on his deathbed, and she’s keeping it.’

  ‘She did really love your father, then? I mean, you don’t think she married him for the money?’

  ‘Worshipped him would be nearer the mark. He was fifteen years older than her, and she thought he was all things wise and wonderful. What he said went, even if she didn’t agree with him.’ He frowned a little. ‘What made you think I thought she’d married him for his money?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. What does she work at in her cottage?’

  ‘She writes. She’s quite a well-known novelist.’

  ‘What name does she write under?’

  ‘Angela Laurence. But now she’s writing her autobiography.’

  ‘Is her life interesting?’

  ‘She thinks it is.’

  She picked up an apple, and conversation ceased for a while.

  He looked round the little harbour, not yet a tourist Mecca, but going that way. The town grew busier every year, and at the weekends its population very nearly doubled, along with its road traffic. One of the old harbour buildings was being renovated, about to turn into a restaurant, so somebody thought that Saturday lunchtimes wouldn’t always be as quiet as this one, and he was probably right. Josh would like to have lived here, to be able to offer his diving sessions all summer rather than just at the weekend, but his father had made that impossible, and his stepmother saw to it that the terms of his ludicrous will were adhered to without question, so she wasn’t open to deals being done about who lived where.

  Sandie threw the apple-core over the side, and sat in the chair beside him. ‘Was the hold-up the end of your criminal career?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She smiled again. He liked Sandie Townsend. He liked her very much indeed.

  SCENE VI – CORNWALL.

  Saturday, July 12th, 3.30 p.m.

  The Deck of Lazy Sunday.

  The conversation had covered rather more mundane topics after that interesting introduction, as Sandie gathered the sort of information she might be expected to have about a boyfriend, and Josh supplied it. He had no need to ask about her; Paul had told him everything he needed to know.

  She picked up her beach-robe, feeling in the pockets, drawing out cigarettes and lighter. ‘Why didn’t you get charged with murder like the other man?’ she asked.

  ‘I told the court that I had no idea he’d got a gun until he told me to cover the attendant while he empt
ied the till, shoved it into my hands and it went off. He said that I’d brought the gun with me, and he had been nowhere near it when it went off. They didn’t believe him, and they did believe me.’

  ‘And which version was true?’

  Josh smiled. ‘Well, I know which one my father believed.’

  ‘But he was wrong, wasn’t he, Josh?’ said Paul’s voice.

  Josh swung lazily round to see his half-brother walk noiselessly across the deck in his entirely correct footwear which went with his entirely correct casual wear, and his entirely correct wife.

  ‘No one meant to kill the guy,’ Josh said. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Either way,’ said Sandie, ‘it was because you gave evidence against this man that he got done for murder and you didn’t?’ She threw her cigarette over the side, and picked up another apple. ‘You can’t be his favourite person.’

  ‘I’m sure I’m not. And, as you may have worked out, his sentence is almost up, which is why I recently took out insurance.’

  ‘Insurance?’ said Sandie.

  Josh nodded towards the wheelhouse. ‘See that little cabinet in there? Open the top drawer.’

  Sandie made to get up; Paul sighed loudly, and Elizabeth glanced over at him. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘Josh, I don’t honestly think the girls should be involved in—’

  ‘The girls?’ said Elizabeth. ‘Sometimes you’re very like your father, Paul. We got the vote some time ago, and if either of us objects to whatever it is, I expect we’ll say so. Go on, Sandie. Let’s see Josh’s insurance.’

  Sandie put down her apple and went into the wheelhouse, pulling open the drawer of the cabinet, and turned to Josh, her eyes wide.

  ‘Take it out. But make sure no one on any of the other boats sees it.’

  She hesitated for just a moment before drawing out the Smith and Wesson .38, holding the butt between her fingers and thumb, and looked over at Josh, her face slightly flushed. ‘I’ve never even seen a handgun before,’ she said. ‘Is it real?’

  ‘Not much use if it wasn’t.’

  ‘Is it loaded?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Paul jumped up, taking it from her, pushing out the cylinder, emptying the cartridges into his hand, dropping them into the drawer, glaring at Josh. ‘Idiot,’ he said. ‘She could have killed someone.’ He handed the gun back to her. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You can look at it now.’

  She pointed it towards the deck, and pulled the trigger.

  ‘I can’t make it work,’ she said.

  ‘Pull the hammer back.’

  She pulled back the hammer, and this time the cylinder turned, and the hammer clicked. She looked round at Josh, her eyes shining. ‘Can I fire it for real some time?’ she asked.

  Josh held her eyes, and smiled. ‘Why not?’ he said, almost to himself.

  SCENE VII – CORNWALL.

  Saturday, July 12th, 3.40 p.m.

  The Wheelhouse of Lazy Sunday.

  Sandie wasn’t sure if he meant it. She ran her fingers along the blue-grey barrel, then closed her hand round the shiny wooden grip. It was beautiful, she thought, excited at the thought of really making it shoot. But he might not have meant it.

  Josh smiled at her. ‘Paul will show you how to use it properly,’ he said, a glint of wickedness in his eyes as he deliberately forced Paul to acknowledge her presence. ‘Won’t you, Paul?’ he added, still looking at her.

  Paul had little option but to agree that he would show her how to handle the revolver, but Sandie doubted that he really wanted to.

  ‘Paul was an officer in the SAS,’ Josh went on. ‘He learned how to shoot properly.’

  ‘Unlike you,’ said Paul. ‘And it wasn’t the SAS, as you very well know.’

  ‘Well, it was some super-secret outfit,’ Josh said, still addressing all his remarks to Sandie. ‘We’ll need a target for you to shoot at,’ he said. ‘We’ll fix something up for tomorrow morning, before the first diving session.’

  ‘You can’t go letting a gun off round here,’ said Paul.

  Josh smiled. ‘Show him what else is in the drawer, Sandie. Not the boxes of ammunition – the other thing.’

  Sandie pulled the drawer open a little further and drew out a metal tube. ‘This?’ she asked.

  ‘A silencer?’ Paul said. ‘You told me it was for self-defence. Where does a silencer fit in to that?’

  ‘If that bastard comes after me, I will defend myself quickly and quietly, take him out to sea and tip him over the side well weighted down.’

  Paul sighed again. ‘Silencers don’t work as well with revolvers as they do with pistols,’ he said. ‘It might not be as quiet as you think.’

  ‘Doesn’t having an illegal revolver count as inappropriate behaviour?’ asked Elizabeth.

  ‘Sorry, Elizabeth,’ said Josh. ‘The inappropriate behaviour clause only applies to the family home. I don’t keep it at the family home. I keep it here.’

  Sandie hadn’t the faintest idea what they were talking about; she hoped she wasn’t going to get drawn into the conversation, in case a girlfriend of Josh’s would be expected to know. She was a little bemused at the matter-of-fact way they all spoke about Josh’s crime and its aftermath, but then they had had a long time to get used to it, she supposed, and Josh clearly encouraged discussion of it. She liked that. And he didn’t give a damn about it. She liked that too.

  Elizabeth was watching her, her eyes resting as frankly on hers as Josh’s had done a moment ago, and Sandie had no way of knowing what was going on in her head, because she knew nothing about Elizabeth at all. She had lied even when she had said she had heard a lot about her, because Paul mentioned her name only when he was trying to impress on her the need for secrecy, and his choice of language in describing her was less than flattering, which had given Sandie a quite wrong impression.

  She was about ten years older than Sandie, but she was attractive, slim, and, Sandie thought, probably a natural blonde. She did looked a little battle-hardened, but that was hardly surprising. Sandie hadn’t known Paul long, but she could imagine that his wife had not had an easy time of it.

  The two brothers – half-brothers, she reminded herself, though Paul never used the qualification – were very alike; Paul was more classically handsome, but they were both dark and well-built, both attractive. That was where the resemblance ended. Josh seemed to be much more honest, in an odd sort of way, than Paul, even if he had robbed a petrol station. He had only known her for a couple of hours, but he had answered her questions directly in a way that Paul never had, and never would.

  Josh took the gun from her, and carefully reloaded before putting it back in the drawer, his eyes still holding the question that they had had when she had first said she would like to fire it. She looked back at him, smiling, feeling a little as though she had known him all her life.

  ‘The customers are arriving back,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t do to let them see it.’

  She looked over his shoulder at the small group of people who were making their way down the harbour. Josh had told her about some of them; she amused herself by trying to pick out the bank manager, the stockbroker, the two Australian tourists. She got most of them wrong.

  One, she had no problem with. Billy the rent-boy looked every inch what he was, though not quite what she had expected. Josh had described him as beautiful, which he was, but she had expected an almost feminine beauty. Billy, despite his youth and his calling, was decidedly masculine, and his beauty was male beauty, the kind that Michelangelo would have wanted to sculpt, the kind that two-dimensional paintings could never quite reproduce.

  But that beauty, she felt sure, went no deeper than his flawless skin.

  SCENE VIII – CORNWALL.

  Saturday, July 12th, 4.05 p.m.

  The Car Park at Penhallin Harbour.

  Angela watched from her car, and saw Lazy Sunday take on its diving customers and make its way out of the harbour to the dive site. She had almost gone down
before they left, then had decided against it.

  But that had been Elizabeth with Paul in the supermarket car park; she had been sure of it, and now she had confirmed it. And while it might shock any normal mother to see her son with another woman, it shocked her to see Paul with his wife. Elizabeth had never so much as considered the possibility of joining Paul when he went diving.

  That in itself hadn’t surprised Angela, who, despite being born and brought up by the sea, had no desire to explore it; it seemed to her that the sea was full of things she particularly didn’t want to look at, and even though she had been married to a diving nut, the idea of spending your leisure time in an environment hostile to human life hadn’t appealed.

  But Elizabeth’s sudden appearance in Penhallin did surprise Angela. Why now? Why accompany Paul this weekend? Paul had been coming to Penhallin at the weekends since the beginning of May. It had to be because Elizabeth thought Paul was up to something, and she was hoping to catch him out. There had been a girl in the car with them; Angela didn’t know if that meant anything, but she was desperate to find out. She lived in constant dread of one of the boys being disinherited, because that would truly tear the family apart.

  If Josh put a foot wrong, her late husband would expect her to invoke the conditions of his will, and she would do it, if she had to. But she already felt like a prison-wardress, just doing what he had requested of her; she didn’t go out of her way to catch her stepson out. And Elizabeth hadn’t gone out of her way to catch Paul out either, until now, and that worried Angela, because it might mean that this time she thought she could.

  That worry, plus the insatiable curiosity which had turned Angela into a writer, a novelist, an observer of the human condition, and the sheer determination with which she had always, against all the odds, held her family together, was what was making her itch to find out what was going on. It was only by a great effort of will that she had forced herself to stay in the car, and now she wished she had just gone down to the boat.

  But the boat was out now, and there was no chance of finding out what was going on until it got back, so she might as well go back to the cottage, and get on with her work. And she was having second thoughts about going down there this evening; Josh wouldn’t like it, not with all his customers there. She’d pop down tomorrow morning, maybe, before the first diving session. That would be better.