The Tintagel Secret Read online

  I slept in the shed again that night, and the next day when I woke, everything had changed. The sun seemed more vivid and whereas I assumed I would be upset and worried, just as I had been every day for most of my life, I was not. It was as if a blanket of numbness had been spread out over the pain and tucked in at the edges. I walked to the village and withdrew what I could of my remaining cash and did the same the next day. I had some food in the house and I brought it outside and put it in a wooden coal box outside the house; that would act as a fridge. The house loomed in front of me, a spectre of my stupidity and trust. I mulled over Andrew's treatment of his own mother for a couple of days, then realised that this, along with other incidents, belonged to life's unanswered questions.

  One thing did strike me though. Because I felt number and less involved than before, I started to see Andrew's behaviour for what it was; selfish. He'd always been a little bit demanding, and this selfishness had shown itself more and more until he was consumed with jealousy. Now, by default, he had landed in beautiful Cornwall, in the lap of celebrities and politicians, handling their insurance for big commissions. Yet he still couldn't help himself. He still had to take what belonged to his mother. In a flash of shocking memory, I saw John, on the day my mother came to collect her belongings and ask my father for a divorce, push my own mother to the floor.

  Even though I had nowhere to live, I couldn't leave Tintagel. I had nowhere to go, no money and no one to go to. I mentally counted my living relatives and searched through their profiles for sympathy. I didn't even know where my sisters lived. John and Dad still lived on Baggerley Street and my other brother had emigrated to Canada years ago. Stan had a sister, but she lived in Aberdeen.

  There was no one. So here I was. I'd cried myself hysterical that week and eaten everything in the coal box. I'd explored the house again, mainly to see if I could possibly sleep in there, but it was still sodden. I'd found a cubby-hole at the back of the kitchen where there was a selection of larger gardening tools, a manual mower, a strimmer, and various hose pipes. I'd automatically flicked one of the light switches without thinking, but there was a fizz and an electrical burning smell, so I didn't try that again. I used the toilet, but when I flushed it more water dripped through the ceiling in the hallway so again, I didn't repeat. The house was truly beautiful, with much of its original coving still in place and the huge Cornish fireplaces intact. I considered lighting fires in them to dry out the property, but I had no idea where to get coal from.

  Two more weeks went by. I got used to digging holes to go to the loo and using a hose pipe with the nozzle of a watering can taped on, draped over the washing line, as a shower. I'd found a tiny tin bath behind the trees. I'd warm some water in pan on the stove, which thankfully was a plug-in electric affair, and have a big girl's wash, as my mother called these scrub downs, in the relative warmth of the shed. I knew I had to figure out a way to get the house repaired, but at the moment it was eluding me. I told myself I was in shock and that I needed time to recover, but I knew that I was slipping into that unravelment I had feared. I knew that standing naked in my garden under a cold shower, laughing and shrieking, was not something I would have considered only a few weeks ago. My hair, already unruly, had degenerated into loosely held curls and was greying at the roots. I found a piece of mirror beside the phone box and looked at myself, a tanned, frowning woman I hardly recognised.

  I'd been phoning Andrew every day, only to hear he didn't want to speak to me, and eventually I didn't go to the phone box. Some of the seeds I had planted on my first morning here, when my future had looked so bright, had pushed their green heads through the soil. It reminded me that life had to go on and I couldn't sit here forever, however tempting that was. In the night, I wondered what would happen if I died of exposure. No one would find me, I would be here, in my little shed, maybe for years. No one would chase me for money, hammering on the door and maybe looking in the shed, because I'd bought the house outright and paid bills up front. There was no need for anyone to come into the garden, anywhere near the shed. I could die here and no one would notice.

  As I discovered, I was still living. Day after day, week after week. It had become a challenge to find enough to eat around the shed and I knew I'd eventually have to go into town. But, on the positive side, the sunflower seeds were sprouting and the first signs of the vegetable patch had grown into a promising green blanket.

  That morning was very much like this one. Even with a background of desperation, I had felt slightly optimistic. I'm still thinking about the house and Andrew and the bloody item what I hear a car pull up outside. I rush to the wall and see Mia Connelly getting out of a red Mondeo. She goes to knock on the front door and I rush to open the gate.

  'I'm here, Detective Constable.'

  She steps back as I rush out.

  'Right. Can I have a word?'

  She walks towards the gate and I close it behind me.

  'Of course.'

  She looks at the gate and then the door.

  'Well, aren't you going to ask me in?'

  I hold her off, more out of fear than anything else.

  'I thought we could sit on that bench over there, by the post box. Nice day.'

  She shakes her head and lights a cigarette.

  'No. The sun give you wrinkles.'

  She's studying my face as proof and she opens the car door. We get in and she opens the window. Her handbag is open in the footwell in front of me and I see a pregnancy testing stick and a bottle of Vitex. I bend forward a little and see the damning single line.

  'So. Lizzie. I've been thinking. I've checked you out and you seem to be who you say you are. I've had another call off Julia who told me what you said to her, about Susan Blake being similar to you in appearance. We also have a friend of Mrs Blake telling us that a couple of weeks ago she was approached by someone asking her if she had something of theirs. She couldn't see who it was because it was dark and didn't tell her friend much about it. But it must have scared her for her to have mentioned it.' She's staring at me and I look at my hands. 'So. Lizzie. I'm wondering if you know a little bit more about this than you are telling me. You were at the scene of the crime, and according to Julia you often sleep on the headland. Or at least go there late at night. Is there a reason for this?'

  So here we have it. She's a clever one. Someone is asking me directly about my Top Secret as well as why someone would want to kill me. I desperately want to tell her about my notes. But if I tell her about my theory, about the paint box and the twisted metal trinket and my father's madness, she'll find my family and tell them I'm in Tintagel with a secret. It wouldn't really take them much to work out what that was, and then I'd really be in trouble.

  'I just like to get about. That's all.'

  'So. You like pretending you're homeless?'

  I bite my tongue. If only she knew.

  'It's a free world, isn't it?'

  'Not for Susan Blake. Not any more.' Mia's phone rings and she grabs it.

  'Mia Connelly.'

  Lots of nods an uhu's. I watch her. She’s a very serious woman.

  'So, what's the location? Yeah. The waterfall park? OK. On my way.'

  She starts the car and throws her cigarette out of the window.

  'Get out, Lizzie. Have a think about what I said. It's important that you tell us everything you know.'

  I nod.

  'Right.'

  'Especially now. It seems another woman has been killed. Maybe it's an accident, but I won't know until I get there.' She turns to look at me. 'Mid-forties. Red hair. Medium build. Ring any bells?'

  I get out of the car and watch her drive off. I know she said she didn’t want anything for her little fertility problem, but I’ve left a bracelet for her on the car seat. Better than hers, with a little tag placed as an ovulation counter. Poor Mia. I guess that’s partly why she’s so serious. That, and her job. Must be difficult trying to work out what someone else is thinking with such a cloudy mind yourse
lf. But she thinks the killer is mistaking other women for me. I wonder if I should tell her about my notes, that it's a warning. That someone’s threatening me. No. Not yet. I can’t tell anyone until I’m sure about who is sending me the notes and that I’m right about the item. She just wouldn’t understand.

  CHAPTER 5

  I sometimes wonder if Tintagel chose me long before I realised it, back when I was a child skipping over the rocks. When I'm scared, like I am now, I go to ground for comfort. From the cliff-top I have a panoramic view and, as I stand here, my cotton skirt bellows out like a sail sending me to my destiny. From here I can see the only safe place in the world to me; whist I am here I know that no one else in the world has discovered my Top Secret. Most of my life has included a wait for the knock on the door that hints at discovery. At the back of my mind I would wonder if it did really happen, or if I had imagined it? Or, maybe, read it? Had someone told me a story about someone else and I had mixed it up? Only when I'm here, in the scrub grass, can I feel safe in the double-barrelled surety that it did happen and no one except me knows.

  I stare out at the ocean, green and white today, with gulls hovering as high as the cliffs for titbits. Behind me is a small chapel, set back but still bleached by salt and wind. I sit down on the cool earth and the lie down, arms and legs stretched out. Of course, it's this kind of behaviour that Julia Scholes despises. She's not the only one. They know nothing about me, but, using guesswork, they sit in endless meetings complaining about me, the focus of everything they fear. Poverty, madness, dirtiness, untidiness, wild abandon, unemployment. Everything they dread taking hold in themselves. They wonder why I let myself get like this and continue to live in squalor. If they knew the choices, they'd be living in a shed too. I haven't let this happen to me, it's the best of two evils; it's this or a bedsit on a sink estate. At least here I'm in a place I love and who knows, someday someone might help me. It's not like I haven't asked.

  No one wants to help me, they'd rather hide me, as if I've become too ugly to be on show in public. I know the meeting where Julia will try to run me out of town is coming up but now I've got bigger things on my mind. Mia suspects that I know something about these murders. Two poor women are dead. I'm shocked and it's only just sinking in, but I'm the cause of all this, I’m somehow at the centre. I'm more and more convinced that it’s all something to do with the piece of gold my Mum had, and I try to remember what happened. Think, Lizzie, think.

  We'd been on a two-day excursion to Cadbury Castle, the place that Dad was convinced was Camelot. We drove to Somerset in Dad's Cortina and I'd never seen him so excited. Of course, we thought we were going to see an actual castle, and we were upset when it turned out to be not much more than a hill. But Dad was wild with enthusiasm.

  'It's here. This is it. I can feel it.'

  His arms outstretched, he ran around like a teenager. By lunchtime we'd seen everything there was to see and we sat on a grass verge eating beef paste sandwiches while Mum and Dad walked along the paths. Dad came back and began to tell us stories of Arthur and Guinevere and how much they were in love. Soon we could see the castle in our imaginations, complete with Merlin and The Knights of the Round Table.

  'This was their heyday! This was their time!'

  He wove the story around the landscape and we were captivated, until we heard Mum shouting.

  'Frank. Frank! Come and look at this.'

  Caught up in the excitement, we all rushed around the hill-fort and saw Mum bending down looking at something. As I got nearer, I could see it glinting in the sun.

  Dad cleared the earth around it and pulled it out of the ground; yellow metal shining, lighter metal shimmering at the top. It was a squashed up something and after a moment, the younger members of the family turned away and began a game of tag. Except me. I watched as they polished it together, Mum spitting on it and shining it up with her sleeve, Dad's eyes like saucers. He held it like the most precious object in the world and looked at Mum.

  'You know what this is, don't you? You bloody know what it is?'

  She shook her head but smiled.

  'It can't be. Can it?'

  I didn't see it again until I found it in Mum's paint box, but from that day onwards, Dad was different. That was when his madness started. And his drinking. He'd sit up all night scouring books, crouching in the libraries in Manchester at the foot of towering bookcases. He'd take me with him sometimes, an I'd peek into the ancient leather-bound books and see the now familiar names. Geoffrey of Monmouth. Thomas Mallory. Welsh Legends and Roman stories. Dad scoured them all, between bouts of drunkenness and ever more disgusting stories of debauchery in the Court of King Arthur. But what for? Why was he doing all the research? I'd always had an inkling it was to do with the find, which Mum had confiscated and put somewhere safe - her idea of safe was the same as her idea of monogamy, loosely drawn. Her life suddenly comes into sharp focus, and I wonder what she was doing while dad was chasing the myths and legends up and down the centuries. How she coped with his mostly sullen, but sometimes manic behaviour. Then I remembered that she didn't cope at all. She left.

  I get up and pull Macy along the path towards the Waterfall Park. I feel a need to go and pay my respects to the poor woman who has died. I don’t want people thinking I don’t care, because I really do. By the time I reach the Park half the village is standing behind the police cordon. This time I'm the right side of it, but it doesn't stop people turning and whispering. Which draws Julia's attention and the latest torrent begins.

  'What a surprise. Lizzie's here again. Always turning up like a bad penny, aren't you?'

  I walk away from her toward the edge of the park, but she follows me.

  'That's it, go and hide over there, but you know the police are onto you, don't you? I told them what you said to me and expect a visit. The thing is, Lizzie, when the police start to dig into your business, they don't stop, and I intend to draw all your bad behaviour to their attention. All of it.'

  I knew she meant it. Year after year around this time she's tried to get me out of the village. She's even followed me a couple of times, dodging behind the bushes in the lane, trying to see where I was sleeping so she could ring the police. I'd lie down in the farmer's field, and she'd scuttle back to the village, the light from her mobile phone polluting the darkness. Eventually, the police would show up and shine their torches in the field to locate the vagrant, as they put it. I'd listen from behind high garden walls as they discussed Julia's obsession. Most of the time they'd dismissed it as Julia meddling. But as time went on, they became as curious as her, and I'd had to scarper a couple of times as they arrived in minutes. The local police seen me around town, but as I wasn't committing a crime by walking on the beach or up the main street, there was nothing they could do. However, vagrancy is a crime, so Julia had done her homework. It was outlawed in 1824 to stop the soldiers who returned from the Napoleonic war spilling onto the streets as they had no accommodation or money. So, it's a crime in England and Wales to be homeless or to cadge subsistence money, whatever reason an individual might have had for being in such a predicament. It's still the same today. Whatever reason. I was fighting a different kind of war but, according to Julia and some law made in 1824 which she clearly sought to enforce, I was liable to be thrown in jail at any given time. Except, unbeknown to her, I did have a home of sorts. It seemed like because she was convinced that I was living on the headland or in a field, she couldn't even consider the fact that Coombes Cottage might be mine. It had never occurred to her that someone like me might have somewhere to live. Of sorts.

  I can see Mia Connelly striding over to us, and Julia nods and smiles.

  'See. Here she comes. Coming to get you, Lizzie. Like I said, slowly, slowly, catchy monkey. I'm going to get you out of here, whatever it takes.'

  Mia is staring at her.

  'Could you keep your voice down, Mrs Scholes. In case you hadn't noticed, a woman has died and you could show some respect.'

&
nbsp; I catch sight of Mia’s arm and she’s wearing the bracelet. Julia reddens.

  'Me? It's her you should be talking to, isn’t it?

  Mia ignores Julia and turns to me.

  'Lizzie, could you come with me please? I'd like to ask you some questions.'

  I walk beside her and she ducks under the yellow tape. I leave Macy by the police van and follow her. She stops suddenly and turns to me.

  'Look Lizzie, this is serious. If you know anything, now's the time to tell me. Even if you don't think it's important.'

  I look at my dusty pumps and think. It would be so easy to just spill out the whole story, to unburden myself from a lifetime of holding something inside me as it grinds at my sanity. She's right. Now would be the right time. Except for one thing. I would have to tell her that someone is after me because of a piece of metal that my Mum found long ago. A piece of twisted metal that only I know the location of. And that's the problem. The location. Top Secret. I don't have it any more, but I know where it is. And if tell anyone the terrible past will burst open and spill out and who knows what the consequences will be?

  'I don't know anything.'

  I can't look at her but I can feel her stare and smell the cigarette smoke.

  'But I think you do. As I said this morning, you seem to think Susan Blake was like you. Do you think someone is trying to kill you, Lizzie? You seem scared and jumpy? Is someone frightening you?'