Peter Helton - Rainstone Fall

I walked on right to the end where, near a set of closed doors under several lemon trees laden with small jewel-like fruit, Gemma huddled with her legs drawn up in a decrepit cane chair. A knitted hat, pointed and with ear flaps, gave her a vaguely Tibetan air. She was smoking an elegant, long-stemmed pipe, sending clouds of smoke, fragrant with cannabis, my way. By her side a tea chest supported a mug of tea and smoking paraphernalia.

‘Wondered when you would turn up,’ she said, her speech somewhat impeded by her bruised, swollen and torn lips. Dried blood scabbed the splits. One eye, too, was blackening and almost swollen shut.

‘About now,’ I said, distracted by her abused face. I looked around. Hers was the only chair. This wasn’t a place where Gemma Stone entertained. It was a place to rest from work, or perhaps it was her refuge from the world; a violent world, by the looks of it. The light at the end of this tunnel came filtered through the foliage of the potted lemon grove. I found an empty bucket nearby, turned it over and sat. She ignored me, looking straight past me into the jungle.

Some of my grumpy detective mood had evaporated in the warmth of concern but I couldn’t just sit there and get stoned from passive smoking, which was quite possible considering the liveliness of Gemma’s pipe. I lit one of my less entertaining cigarettes and added my smoke to the heavy atmosphere.

‘You want to talk about it?’ I said at last.

‘What?’

I raised an eyebrow.

‘You mean this?’ She pointed the stem of her pipe at the blackened eye. ‘Nothing to tell, I fell.’

‘Right,’ I said with less than full conviction.

‘Look, it’s really none of your business but if I’d been in a fight I’d say so, okay, it’s hardly a big deal. I got drunk, I slipped, I fell, end of story.’

It was always possible, I’d seen the empty bottles. ‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ I lied.

‘Oh, Albert. Yes.’ She returned her attention to the pipe.

‘So he was one of your clients? Why didn’t you say so?’

‘Who do you think you are?’ she said sharply. ‘The police are bad enough, then you turn up, uninvited, asking me questions. Every other day, I might add. I don’t have to tell you anything.’ Shooting me a resentful look was difficult with only one working eye but she managed it quite well. ‘Yes, he bought herbal remedies from me, he was a regular customer.’

‘But you didn’t tell the police that either.’

‘How much d’you think I want police traipsing all over this place, looking for murderers under the flowerpots?’

‘Not a lot,’ I agreed.

‘Too right. I don’t pay tax much, I’m not a trained herbalist, and anyway, no one is licensed to dispense the kind of herb I was supplying to Al. He had bad arthritis and smoking pot alleviates the symptoms. Everyone knows that but it’s illegal nevertheless.’

‘I’m aware of it.’

‘Well then. Nearly a third of this tunnel is given over to growing cannabis. Harvest is over now,’ she gestured down the tunnel, ‘but there’s enough evidence around the place to put me away any time.’

‘So Albert had been here the day he was murdered to buy a supply of pot?’

‘No. Never got here.’

‘But you were expecting him?’

‘He hadn’t made an appointment or anything. He’d just turn up on his electric bike at fairly regular intervals. I did think he was due around that time, that day or the next.’

‘I thought you didn’t like people just turning up.’

‘People like you . But Al was all right. We met at the Bath flower show, I had a stall there selling herbs one year.’

‘And you’d been to his place.’

‘Once or twice when he was too bad to even use the electric bike. He’d send word through the chicken lady who brings him eggs that he couldn’t come, which meant he was more desperate than ever, so I’d go round, see what I could do for him. When you mentioned Albert I got worried and drove over.’

Chicken Lady, Pot Lady. . Perhaps it was worth finding out what other ladies there might have been in his life and if they too had reasons not to come forward. ‘Okay, so far so good. Now explain why you seem to be completely invisible to DI Deeks. It’s a trick I would pay money to learn.’

‘Deeks is an arsehole,’ she said flatly. ‘You’d do well to stay away from him.’

‘That’s common knowledge but not an explanation.’

‘I’ve known him for years. He picked me up for possession once, ages ago. We came to an understanding. He has a pretty good idea of what goes on down here at Grumpy Hollow. Too good an idea.’ She put down her pipe which had gone out, then picked up her mug of tea and took a sip, which she instantly spat out again in an arc across the path. ‘Eargh, cold tea. Yuch.’ She got up and walked off down the path. ‘I’ll need to make some fresh.’

‘Hey, wait a second.’ I went after her. ‘You mean to say you managed to bribe Deeks into turning a blind eye?’

‘Managed to?’ Stopping beside a cucumber plant she produced a curved pruning knife, liberated one of the fruits and carried on. ‘You don’t have to try hard with Deeks, he’s as corrupt as they come.’ She walked up to me and tapped my chest with the smooth-skinned cucumber. ‘Now I’ve got a question: how come you knew it was Al who’d died in your car when the police didn’t?’

‘I was coming to that.’ And not before time. ‘A couple of kids had told me they thought they’d overheard two men threaten to arrange a little accident for someone called Albert.’

‘Oh? Did those kids happen to say who made the threat?’

‘No. It was dark and they didn’t see who it was.’

‘And you think — ’

‘Wait, there was more. In the same breath they also mentioned something similar might happen to the old witch snooping around at night .’

‘So. .?’ She managed to put considerable challenge into the one syllable.

I squirmed around. ‘Ehm, well, I thought that perhaps, you know, they might have been referring to you, in which case you might be in consid-’

‘The old witch? The old witch? And you think they were talking about me? I’m thirty-eight! Ouch!’ She dabbed her lips; one of her cuts had torn open. ‘Well okay, I feel a hundred and eight today but really!’ She flashed me a one-eyed rebuke. ‘Do you think I look like an old witch?’

Always the hard questions. I wisely ignored this one. ‘You’re not taking this seriously,’ I said instead.

‘ This is serious . Just because I work up to my neck in muck half the time in the aptly named Grumpy Hollow doesn’t mean I’m completely beyond caring. So?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Course not what?’

‘Of course you don’t look like an old witch. Though you appear to have inherited your wardrobe from one.’ It just slipped out, you know how it goes.

She took a slow deep breath. ‘Says the bloke who rides around dressed like a crashed Spitfire pilot. Ha. Now I really need more tea.’

I followed her back to the caravan. ‘And you’re not worried?’

‘For the old witch?’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But look around you, what would you have me do? If someone wants to hurt me who’s going to stop them?’ When we reached the caravan she squinted at the bottom hinge of the door. ‘Had a good look around inside then, did you?’

‘How can you tell?’

‘I left a dried lentil behind the hinge, it’s on the ground now. No matter. Come in, I might even make you a mug of tea.’

I sat at the table while Gemma lit the gas under a whistling kettle on the stove and cleared away her breakfast debris. ‘You know how they say it’s a small world? Well, you’ve no idea how small until you’ve tried living in a caravan. Now, let’s see.’ She stood on tiptoe to rummage in a cupboard fitted into the curve of the roof above the bed. From there she produced a shoe box, set it opened on to the table and almost reverentially folded back the tissue paper to reveal a pair of tiny, shiny, insubstantial-looking shoes, black, strappy, open-toed with three-inch heels. She lifted them out and placed them on the table, then turned them until they pointed accusingly at me. ‘And how far do you think I’d get in those? I wouldn’t even make it to the car. No, no, no, wait.’ Another dive into the cupboard above my head. This time she produced a bundle wrapped in tissue paper. She opened it and let the content unwind in front of her: a little black dress, bias-cut, black beads shimmering around the neckline. ‘Do you know when I last wore that?’ She rolled it up again, quickly, angrily. ‘I don’t. Can’t even remember. Oh, yes I can, Christmas two years ago. Jack Fryer had invited me for Christmas dinner at Spring Farm. When I got there it turned out I was the only guest. He had too much Christmas cheer and lunged at me over the roast chicken. I stuck a fork in one of his paws and drove myself home. Ever since then, usually around the full moon when he’s had a skinful, he comes round here to apologize and tries to make it up to me , if you know what I mean. I keep a special fork for him in my drawer,’ she concluded and carefully put away the shoes before seeing to the kettle which had begun to whistle like a steam train.