Fairwood (a suspense mystery thriller) (13 page)

She still didn’t look convinced. He felt himself getting wound up, he opted for a ploy to try to get her riled up; kick her into action. “We need to phone the police,” he said, feeling Pandora's eyes burning a hole into the back of his head as he did so.

He looked around, a gesture that suggested she should tell him where the phone was. She followed his eyes, didn’t utter a word -- her face a picture of mild confusion.

“Where is it?” he wanted to know.

“
It
, dear?”

“The phone.”

She wiped her hands on her apron, leaving a dusting of flour on the blue and white material. She ran the back of her hand over her forehead. “Oh, would you look at that,” she said, inspecting the sweat on her hand. “I’m sweating like a pig.”

Dexter watched her, waited for a response. The kitchen was a clutter; a mess of pots simmered away on the stove; juice from diced meat sat on one chopping board, remnants of vegetable peel on another. The air was thick and humid; it stuck to Dexter’s flustered skin as he studied the calmly bemused old lady.

“Well?” Dexter said eventually.

“Yes, dear?”

He groaned, felt his back teeth grind together in an instinctive act of annoyance. “The phone, where is it?”

He had no intention of using it, he wasn’t dumb enough to involve the police, but the longer that the merry bed and breakfast owner frustrated him with her indifferent incompetence, the more he felt like doing it just to piss her off.

She beamed a wide, happy smile. “We don’t have one.”

“What?”

She continued to smile. She gave him a gentle, dismissive shrug. “No need for one really.”

“But this is a business.”

Again she shrugged, turning her head away momentarily to study one of the pots as it prepared to boil over. “Well, it’s more of a home really. Like I already told you, we don’t get many visitors here.”

Dexter opened and closed his mouth, shook away the anger that threatened to envelop him. He didn’t want to be annoyed with the woman, he liked her, she possessed an unshakeable glee that he found charming and touching, but in the heat of the kitchen, under the strain of losing his car, his patience was fading.

He turned on his heel, raised a massaging hand to his temple and walked out of the kitchen, pulling Pandora with him into the cooling breeze of the living room.

“Where are you going?” Dorothy asked, skipping behind them, her red and smiling face gleaming at them from the kitchen doorway. “Dinner is ready soon.”

Dexter paused, studied her momentarily. He realised that her smiling delight, what he took to be a happy outlook on the world, was something else entirely. She wasn’t fazed by the theft of one of her customers’ cars right outside her house; wasn’t moved by their anger or frustration.

“I’m going to see your neighbours,” Dexter told her.

“Why would you do that?”

“One of them must know what happened.”

“I doubt it dear.”

Then one of them must have a phone. I’ll call the police, bring them here. Let them sort it out,” he stated, hoping that the show of intimidation would flap the unflappable woman.

She shook her head, put her hands into the kangaroo pouch of her apron and offered him a meek and almost apologetic smile. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is Fairwood dear,” she said, as if that was all that was needed.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Dexter snapped. He felt Pandora's arm on his elbow, trying to usher him away. She didn’t want to upset their host, regardless of how crazy or nonchalant she was acting.

Dorothy didn’t seem daunted. “No one has a phone around here,” she explained.

“How can that be?”

She shrugged. “We don’t have need of those things.”

Pandora stepped forward, piped up, “What if you need to get in touch with someone?”

“Someone?”

“Someone outside of Fairwood.”

Again Dorothy looked bemused. “Why would we want to do that, dear?”

Pandora and Dexter exchanged a glance in the resulting silence, both of them stumped. There were plenty of reasons they could give, dozens they could think of, but what they couldn’t contemplate was how a community, how anyone in the twenty-first century, could survive without acknowledging the world beyond their village.

“Dinner will be ready soon,” Dorothy said, breaking the silence and beaming another wide smile. “Then we can all go to the quiz, right?” she looked at both of them in turn. They studied her face, her smile, her words, then they nodded. Speechless.

Satisfied, Dorothy retuned to the steamy kitchen, leaving Dexter and Pandora swapping creased and bewildered expressions in the living room.

14

“So what, we’re just going to sit here and pretend it never happened?”

Dexter shrugged.

“Are you serious?” Pandora practically squealed with disbelief. She thrust her hands to her hips, loomed over her partner who sat on the edge of the bed.

“What else are we going to do?” Dexter asked, shooting her a sincere expression.

“It’s not just the car, Dexter,” she hissed. “Don’t forget, we have our money in there.”

Dexter nodded, he hadn’t forgotten. They hadn’t stolen much; everything in the earlier heists had been blown almost instantly: new phones, new clothes, drink, dinners. They spent like they might not see the next day, because they weren’t convinced they would. After a few robberies, after their faces had started to appear all over the country, they retreated from the fancy restaurants, bars and shops, into the seclusion of themselves. The final heist was the biggest one, their first bank, the only one worthy of any true fortune, but after shooting and killing the guard they left with less than they’d planned. The accumulation of those final robberies still amounted to a lot of money -- enough to set them both up for life, should they ever find a way away from their own infamy -- and all of that money was stored in the boot of their car.

Fairwood didn’t seem like the home of criminals, of teenagers bent on breaking into cars to steal what they could, or of more upmarket criminals willing to steal the car itself. They couldn’t be sure that any bed and breakfast staff wouldn’t rifle through their belongings, discovering their fortune and their identities. It felt like the right thing to do at the time, if not for the theft of their car, it still would.

“We’ll get it back,” Dexter said. “We have enough on us to get by.” He pulled a wallet out of his back pocket and flashed a few notes. “And no one knows us here, that’s what’s important.”

Pandora shook her head, ran a trembling hand through her hair. She looked to the window, her eyes peering through the greying day and the silky screen of fog that rose like a sea of cigar smoke to greet the emerging evening.

They still had each other, still had their freedom, that was what mattered most of all; she knew that and she appreciated that, but she couldn’t help but feel that everything they had done, everything they had gone through -- all the misery they had caused -- was all for nothing if they didn’t have a penny to show for it.

“We’ll get it back,” Dexter repeated with more confidence, seeing the veil of melancholy drape over his lover’s eyes.

He stood, placed a hand on her shoulder, stretched out his fingers to grasp and toy with strands of her hair. He tilted her head forward, looked her in the eyes. “We’ll go to this quiz tonight, see if we can do some investigating. We’ll find out who took the car, don’t worry.”

“You sure it was someone from Fairwood?” Pandora asked.

He nodded, “They make a big deal about others coming here, it doesn’t seem rational that someone can pop in unseen and unannounced just to steal our car. Something’s amiss here; something’s not right, and tonight we’ll find out what that is.”

15

The radiance of Fairwood had dimmed. Pandora treated the sights of the stone buildings, cobbled paths, green gardens and silent streets with a burgeoning contempt as they made their way to the pub.

They saw a few people on the way, exchanged glances with some, a smile with one, nothing with most. They were determined to find out more about the town, discover the secret to this quiet village where no one drove and no one had access to the simplest of technologies.

“Maybe we stepped into the past,” Pandora said quietly. They had left the bed and breakfast a few minutes earlier, had walked arm in arm on a path that wound through the town’s populated centre -- although populated didn’t seem apt for such a quiet segment of nowhere. The only person to smile at them was a young
boy; he had stood in an open doorway of one of the houses and flashed Pandora the widest, friendliest smile she’d seen in a long time, before he scarpered back into the house with a playful air. It was nice to see that, although it lacking in amenities, Fairwood still had its share of friendly, playful children.

“Maybe that’s why they don’t have phones or cars,” Pandora continued on her wandering trek through the absurd.

“Yet they didn’t say anything when we pulled up in something that could have been an alien spacecraft as far as they were concerned.”

“Hmm,” Pandora mused playfully. “Good point.”

The Gentle Giant pub sat at the end of a short street. A red brick building set into a gravelled garden that was flanked with a neatly manicured layer of grass. Two oak finished picnic benches, complete with wide-brimmed parasols, sat either side of the open double doors. They were both surprised to hear the overflow of conversation and music coming from inside the pub, the first semblance of noise pollution they’d encountered since their arrival.

They exchanged a glance, equally impressed and worried by the sound of a room full of patrons enjoying themselves.

“Are we sure this is a good idea?” Pandora said, slowing her steps as they approached a wooden gate which opened onto the gravelled surroundings of the pub. “It’s not too late to go back.”

“And what, stay in our room until everyone forgets our face?” Dexter shook his head, wrapped his arm around her. “Come on Pan, since when were you the shy one?”

She laughed softly, tried to brush off her worries.

She thought she heard the commotion decrease as Dexter led her through the open gate, their feet crunching on the stark white gravel. The voices seemed to soften, the music lower, as they approached the pub. She gave Dexter a concerned glance but he wasn’t looking at her. He didn’t seem as concerned, obviously didn’t feel a chill creep up his spine like she did; didn’t feel the sense of unease that gnawed at the back of her mind.

They crossed the threshold of the pub, entered into the darkened, lively interior, and ushered in a silence that forced Pandora to halt. Dexter stopped by her side, sensing her resistance.

The music still played -- a soft rock song from the early seventies that Pandora recognised only in a bastardised form from a commercial -- but the conversations ceased. Through the doorway the room opened up, with rows of tables either side and a large bar ahead. Some people were standing at the bar, others loitered between it, the rest occupied the half dozen tables. None of them spoke.

Pandora looked to Dexter, a desperate pleading look, a look that suggested their time had come, their game was up; they had been recognised and there was nothing they could do. The scene played out like a spaghetti western, after the arrival of the outlaws and the sudden deathly silence, the conversations and the noise returned with a simultaneous, deafening chatter.