Dead in Time

Chapter Four

I got back from Auntie Jan’s at about one, the scrapbook tucked inside my coat to keep it from the rain as I stepped off the bus, though I didn’t want to go straight home. Not yet. What if I found him there?

Worse, what if I didn’t?

I took the picturesque route, past my shabby fringe of Kemp Town and down to the Enclosures. These gardens, laid down in the early nineteenth century, formed the jewel of the Kemp Town Estate proper, jealously guarded by the residents of the ownership co-op. Years ago, there even used to be a constable, provided with his own cottage from which he could judge whether non-residents had dressed respectably enough to be allowed entrance. These days, things weren’t quite as formal, though I’d heard there’d been whisperings among the committee to find bylaw loopholes proscribing the exposure of pallid beer bellies. They’d already managed to ban Estate houses having for sale boards outside them on ‘aesthetic grounds’… I wasn’t sure, but I suspected prospective buyers also had to know a funny handshake or two.

The gardens were still lovely, though, even in today’s apathetic, muggy drizzle. There’s a cut, a tunnel that runs down from the rose garden to the shore, under Marina Parade. The trees curve over it, they cosset the path and—in the spring—wreath it in mottled green and the heady scent of the flowers. I took that way, shadows dappling my steps. Lewis Carroll, in his mundane incarnation as the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, had often visited friends at one of the houses in Lewes Crescent, and allegedly this path had inspired the rabbit hole down which Alice descended to Wonderland. For a moment, Grace Slick’s voice ran through my head.

Hurriedly I walked on, down out of the patchy shade and onto the seafront. Watching the grey tide calmed me down, made me think that, despite everything, it might somehow be all right. A foolish notion, maybe, but there’s something about the sea that makes you feel so small you know nothing’s really important; it only seems that way.

I leaned on the railing, its wooden poles salt-bleached and its cheerful, turquoise-painted metal uprights rust-stained. I stared at the sea, breathing its sharp, sandy air. Mum’s scrapbook crackled against my chest and, carefully, I slipped it from the confines of my jacket. This was insane. The metaphysics of last night aside, where was I even supposed to start? If the killer had gone undetected then and no questions had been asked since, how the hell could I find a scrap of evidence? And, even if I did, what would I do about it?

My fingers brushed the dry page edges. Out below the clouds, a gull screeched, wheeling down on the wind.

“Nice here, innit?”

I stifled the incipient squeak of surprise, then closed my eyes with a sort of sinking dread. “How long have you been there?”

I thought, for a moment, I smelled a waft of cigarette smoke. As my eyes flew open, it dissipated and I looked to my right. Damon Brent leaned nonchalantly on the rail beside me. His bottle green velvet jacket appeared to move gently in the breeze, open over a blue crewneck with a silver foil print on it that looked suspiciously like agapanthus leaves. I found myself glancing at his feet—cherry red Cuban heels—and a pair of distressed (and distressingly) dark gold velvet flares. A cigarette burned in his fingers, pale flakes of ash carried away on the breeze. He turned and smiled at me.

“Not long. Thought I’d come out for a walk, y’know? See what the twenty-first century’s like first-hand.” He took a drag on the cigarette. “I love the seaside. Never had much chance to go when I was a kid… but I like the sound it makes.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, still watching the ash flutter.

Could it land, transmuted somehow into something cold, gritty and real? I had, that morning, almost been annoyed to find he’d rinsed up the coffee cup he’d used for an ashtray last night. I’d wanted to know what happened to the fag ends.