Bury Him Darkly Read online

  Bury Him Darkly

  Roger Ormerod

  Copyright © Roger Ormerod 1991

  The right of Roger Ormerod to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1991 by Constable & Company Limited

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Extract from Time to Kill by Roger Ormerod

  Chapter 1

  I was going home. That was what I kept telling myself — you’re going home, Philipa. Home being England. And I was doing it in style, in the leisurely and luxurious manner that befitted a woman with decidedly independent means. So why wasn’t I happy? I’d deliberately chosen the QE2 rather than fly, simply so that I could savour over a longer period the feeling of release, and anticipate the joy of home-coming. Yet I found myself restless and unsettled. New York does that to you. You either hate it or you love it, and I’d lived there long enough to grow into loving it. I could not shake my mind free from the fact that I was leaving, not returning to, something.

  Get it down to basics, and that was really the trouble. There I was, able to settle into genteel retirement, and me only in the thirties, damn it all. I’d worked all my life. Worked hard. Now I didn’t need to, and I was already bored half out of my mind. And I couldn’t imagine anything interesting waiting for me in England. Well ... there was Detective Inspector Oliver Simpson, but I wasn’t sure what his reaction would be. Enigmatic, that was Oliver.

  I had a luxury single cabin on the boat deck, which meant I was only a step away from miles of promenade deck and acres of space for deck chairs and general relaxation. But it was October, and the weather wasn’t all that marvellous, so that only the hearty few of us ventured into the open and the very fresh sea air that first morning. It was there that I met her, tramping towards me at a slight list against the wind, one hand clamped on a wide-brimmed hat, which was ridiculously unwieldy out there, head down, and with some sort of wide beach slacks or culottes flapping around her legs. The dark mirror glasses were surely superfluous as there’d been no sign of the sun since we’d sailed from New York.

  As we approached she seemed to notice me only at the last possible second. A gust of wind nearly took the hat from her hand, clamping it over her face, and she seemed to stagger. I stepped sideways, but all the same we nearly collided.

  ‘Stupid woman,’ I heard her mutter.

  Then she was past me, and I was left to stare after her, wondering whether she would be able to remain on her feet. She couldn’t have been drunk, as it was pre-breakfast-time. But the spike-heeled shoes certainly wouldn’t have been much help.

  And yet I’d had the distinct impression, the previous evening, that those same mirror glasses had been viewing me from a discreet distance, and more than once.

  So naturally I kept my eyes busy after that, searching her out. It was something to do. That shows how derelict my mind had become, that I couldn’t find anything better. I’d go mad, I realized, without some objective in my life.

  She was there for breakfast in the Columbia Restaurant, with a table all to herself in a corner, like someone hiding behind her dark glasses, yet in a manner guaranteed to draw attention. She had changed into something very casual but elegant, and clearly expensive.

  Only gradually did it impress itself on me that I was not the only one finding interest in her. She was very beautiful, and thus would attract attention, but this was a murmurous and distinct attention, though of course, in the Columbia, dignified and subdued. But people did turn in their seats; they did whisper to each other and glance again. They were doing it at my own table. I didn’t dare to seek out her identity, not wishing to seem a fool, so, as we’d already met, so to speak, I took my second cup of coffee over to her table, sat in the spare chair, and asked, ‘D’you mind if I join you?’

  She stared intently at me. I was reflected in miniature twice in her lenses, both smiling. Her expression was completely blank, but nothing, not even the immobility, could detract from the perfection of her face. Usually there’s a tiny flaw, the eyes too close or too slanted, the nose not in proportion, the mouth too wide, too small, or too prim. But no, she had every item correctly placed and in absolutely perfect proportions. I’d have gone for a lighter make-up myself, though. Looking closer, I could see that what was visible around her eyes had been over-treated, and the lipstick applied too generously. Her hair was a golden brown, not so far from my own hair colour, which resembles copper wire and usually looks like a tight tangle. Hers was perfectly styled, sweeping down behind her ears, and with a hint of fringe over her wide brows.

  I had plenty of time to absorb all this, because she took a long while deciding how best to tell me to bugger off. Then she whipped off the glasses and blinked. I’d been correct about the eyes. Too much eye-shadow. But they were a clear and intelligent grey.

  ‘Is it dyed?’ she asked.

  ‘What...’

  ‘Your hair.’

  I laughed. ‘No. It’s how it is. It’s like copper wire, and I can’t do anything about it.’

  ‘Remarkable. And the eyes?’

  ‘Pardon? What about my eyes?’

  ‘You’re not wearing coloured contact lenses?’

  This was all very strange, even slightly insulting. ‘Of course not. They’re naturally brown.’

  ‘Which’, she observed, ‘goes darker when you’re angry.’

  ‘Is it surprising...’

  ‘Sorry. I was being too personal.’

  Then, as though to close the incident, she made a move to replace the glasses. I said, ‘I wouldn’t, you know. Too much shading makes your irises shy, and then they won’t close down and you lose your distance vision.’

  ‘How clever of you. But I need them.’

  ‘Weak eyes?’

  ‘No. Protection. I’m hoping not to be recognized.’

  ‘They draw attention,’ I assured her. ‘And you have been.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Everybody seems to know you.’

  She raised her eyebrows. The lips twitched, almost into a smile. ‘You nearly persuade me that you don’t.’

  I grinned at her, then pursed my lips and shook my head.

  ‘You don’t?’ She leaned back in her chair, forward again.

  Then she hissed, ‘Roma Felucci.’

  ‘Ah!’ I said.

  ‘You still...’

  ‘I’m sorry. But as you said, I’m stupid.’

  ‘As I said… oh, I see. I didn’t mean you, I meant me. Those ridiculous shoes! Sorry. My apologies.’

  ‘It’s quite all right. But tell me — who are you?’

  ‘Jesus! Where have you been? Don’t you watch the telly?’

  ‘I’ve been in New York for the past few years, working fifteen hours a day. No, I never had the time nor the patience to watch the box. I don’t even own one.’

  ‘Well...’ she said. ‘I never thought I’d meet such a person. Haven’t you even heard of Colossus? That’s our show. Colossus.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘Ha!’ she barked mirthlessly. Then she put her head back and really laughed, a spendidly fluent peel of joy. Heads lifted all over the place. ‘Oh, I am glad I met you. Jay would be shocked, but he’
s got no sense of anything but his own importance.’

  ‘Jay?’ I asked politely.

  ‘My husband. Jay Messenger. Male lead in the series.’

  ‘But you’re Roma —’

  ‘My film name, that is. My professional name.’ She leaned forward so I did too. She wished to confide. Her accent had been middle-west with a touch of Irish, but abruptly it became very English, Shropshire English. ‘I’m Bella Fields, really. Bella Messenger… for now. The bastard. Never mind that. D’you want my autograph?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Good. Then let’s get out of here.’

  That was the beginning of our friendship, if it can be so described. Relationship, perhaps. Suddenly I found myself very popular. The eager fans of Roma Felucci seemed reluctant to approach her. She adopted an icy reserve, which I felt was a deliberate barrier, but that was before I got to know the fiery and unpredictable bitch she portrayed on the screen. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely an act. Whatever the reason, she was avoided by everyone but me. So I was the one to be approached, and I spent a fair part of my time fending off their eager enquiries. As this is somewhat dampening to the ego, I soon discovered I was happier with Roma than without.

  She seemed indifferent to my reason for seeking her company, but not displeased. We did not reach the relaxed and cheerful relationship that required only the casual remark, ‘See you at the Theatre Bar’, to arrange the next meeting. I would look around, there she would be, alone and with a space around her, and I would fill it. Her eyes possibly lit up at my approach, but I couldn’t tell. I wondered whether she slept in those damned mirror glasses.

  It is not surprising that I began to feel protective towards her, as I reckoned I was the elder by a year or two. She seemed so lost and remote. It was even difficult to extract from her the reason for this journey.

  ‘Going back home,’ she said, when I gently pressed the point. ‘A week or two, just to see the old place. It’s been ten years. Sure to be that. Who’s counting? God knows what it’s like now. It was nearly falling down then. One of those square, red-brick old dumps they used to build, about six bedrooms and a huge kitchen with an old range. And we...’

  At that, she seemed to recollect herself and put her glass to her lips to silence them. We were in the Yacht Club Bar at the time, me on gin and lime and she on bourbon on the rocks. I waited. Nothing more.

  ‘Where?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This house. Where is it?’

  ‘On the edge of town.’

  ‘Which is?’

  She raised her chin. ‘What’s it to you? I hated the place.’

  ‘But all the same you’re going back. Didn’t you mention Shropshire?’

  She flicked her glass with a long fingernail, provoking a ting. The note was that of an empty glass. I called them in.

  ‘I did not,’ she said confidently.

  ‘Perhaps it was the accent,’ I conceded.

  She cocked her head at me. A note of approval entered her voice. ‘You’ve got a good ear. It’s Shropshire, yes. Nearly in Wales. Horseley Green. Know it?’

  ‘Not forty miles from Penley, my own home town.’

  ‘Well! Small world.’ She was losing interest.

  ‘And a touch of Irish,’ I said.

  ‘It’s still there?’ I might have been using it as a criticism, the way she was suddenly on the defensive.

  ‘Shouldn’t it be?’

  She shrugged. Every gesture was overdone. ‘Doesn’t matter. I’m the wild Irish-American bitch in the series. I left it in.’

  ‘The accent?’

  ‘Sure, the accent. I got that in Dublin.’ As though she’d found it in a shop. ‘I was there two years. Theatre mostly, before a tiny part in a film. With Jay. I’d met him a couple of years before that, when I’d got a bit part on the stage. At the Alex, that was, in Birmingham. Brum. You ever been there?’

  ‘Birmingham, yes. The Alex, no. I’ve never been much of a theatre-goer.’ I sensed a loss of interest, which usually came when we weren’t talking about herself. ‘You were saying — about your husband? Jay, isn’t it?’

  ‘Dear Jay! He saw me on the stage in Dublin, and he remembered me, and got me a bit part in a film. Isn’t that marvellous! He was in Ireland making one of those wild-Irish-boy films. That was him. The wild Irish boy! Christ, he was over forty at that time. You couldn’t tell, though. I couldn’t tell. I’d be… what?... just over twenty. And in the film we were supposed to be young lovers! Jesus! The fake! That’s what he was, and always has been. Every couple of years he goes to a clinic and has a year chopped off his face. You never see the real Jay. Nobody does. Except his wife, and that’s me.’

  ‘That was where you married him?’ I asked. ‘In Ireland?’

  ‘Oh no. He came back for me. Now ain’t that romantic!’ Her disgust slipped her into the vernacular. ‘Flew over to take me to the States. And I’ve been there since.’

  I did some mental calculations that she would now be about thirty. She looked much more mature, I thought. Certainly you’d take her for older than me. The first mirror I came across, I checked. Yes. Perhaps I was older, but I thought I looked the younger.

  At that stage I decided she was in flight from her husband, going back to pre-Jay days. She seemed in flight from something, though I got no further than that at the time. Her tension was probably part of her personality.

  I told her a little about myself. This was on the third morning, with the weather brighter and the breeze no more than a light one. I caught up with her on the promenade deck. As usual, she was elegant, slim, walking purposefully with a straight back. She grunted a greeting, not quite rejection. So I told her about my years in New York, as partner in an enterprise that found important jobs for top executive types. On my partner’s death I’d decided to sell out and return to England. Already, I confided, I wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing. I couldn’t remove from my mind the memory of the parting from Marietta, my secretary, tearful in each other’s arms. How long would she take to forget me?

  Roma’s first comment on this review of my life was probably coloured by five years of Colossus scripts. ‘You’ve got a man waiting for you,’ she decided.

  ‘I’m not sure. There’s hardly anybody I know, though there’s a policeman… I’m not certain of his interest.’

  ‘Then forget him, darlin’,’ she advised. ‘You’ll never be sure. I’ve been married eight years to that bastard, Jay, and I still don’t know.’

  ‘You think he might follow you?’

  ‘I’ll kill the friggin’ louse if he does.’

  ‘I’ll keep an eyes on the newspapers,’ I assured her. ‘Star of Colossus Found Dead in Ditch.’

  I said it lightly, even laughed to soften the mood, but she merely glanced at me and tossed her head. Their marriage must have throbbed with tension.

  By the evening of the third day at sea I’d officially switched tables to be more often with her. I felt I still hadn’t learned why she was returning to England. It was just that it seemed to be a matter of self-esteem that I should solve this small mystery. It was in my blood, digging into people’s lives and aspirations. Already I was feeling more relaxed and confident, probing the enigma of Roma Felucci.

  ‘Do they know?’ I asked, over the main course, the fillet of pork medallions.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your company, bosses, whatever. The Colossus people. Do they know where you are and where you’re heading?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ She peered at her plate. ‘I took a month off.’

  ‘They can spare you, can they? You as the lead — and it’s a weekly show, I gather.’

  The medallions bored her; she was easily bored. She thrust her plate aside, banging her elbows on the table and cupping her chin. Her eyes were bright. I’d managed to persuade her to discard the shades.

  ‘You’re nosy, d’you know that?’

  ‘I was just thinking the same.’

  ‘I don�
�t understand your interest.’

  ‘It passes the time, and your life’s a damned sight more glamorous than mine.’

  She lit a cigarette, whipped it from her lips sideways, blew smoke upwards. I hate people smoking between courses. ‘Glamorous? Hah! Funny. It’s just a grind. You’ve seen the show — no, you said you hadn’t. Right. We work ahead. Have to. There were eight weeks in hand, eight shows on tape, and we were easy. So we all had a month off. It’ll be back to the grindstone, a script stuck in my fist, and we’ll be shooting the first scene a quarter of an hour later. We improvise a bit. Have to.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose so.’

  Twice she had said, ‘Have to’. There was clearly a tight regimen involved, Hurry, hurry. No time to sit and ponder.

  The waiter came to collect the plates. She chose the cheesecake with the hot blueberries, I the strawberries and ice cream. She seemed not to worry about her figure, ate whatever she fancied, and yet remained slim and shapely. Burned it all off, I suppose, with her simmering internal aggression, which was never too far from the surface.

  ‘This Colossus,’ she said, ‘it’s a chain of hotels. All over the States. We shoot it all in the studio in New Jersey, and they fill in with shots of other cities. It’s mostly office set and boardroom set, and my bedroom. I’m the boss of Colossus, since my father died. That was dear old Joss Delavere. He really did die — on the set. They had to write me in as the new boss, so it got me the starring role. Jay was livid. It gave me top billing. Over him. Livid, he was. Fuming. It was worth it, just to see his face. In the show he’s the trouble-shooter, travelling to all the hotels where things’re happening, though he doesn’t actually go anywhere. It’s all done in the studio. We have rows. In the script, I mean. Flaming fights. People love it. Then we go back to our own flat and have our own flaming rows.’

  She popped in the final blueberry. Her lips were purple. She distorted them into a grimace. I gathered that even the old house, falling down or not, would be a welcome change. Crumbling masonry for crumbling marriage. But perhaps not. She seemed concerned more about what she was going to face at Horseley Green than what she was fleeing from.