Girl on the Pier

Paul Tomkins

Description

Abandoned time and again by those he holds dear, Patrick Clement is forging a reputation as a forensic sculptor, helping to identify the unclaimed missing. But he can't leave behind a remarkable summer night in 1993, spent alone on Brighton's derelict West Pier with Black, a beautiful photography student. Patrick is haunted by the fact that no sooner did he get to know her than she disappeared from his life... Who is this girl?And where is Black, the one who got away? Decades on, while at work, Patrick is tasked with reconstructing the skull of an unidentified girl found on the pier in the 1970s - the pier he still thinks about. A crime he recalls from childhood, when his family life was in turmoil, Patrick works to discover the truth behind what has happened. Set in Brighton, The Girl on the Pier spans several decades, from the seventies to the present day. Inspired by literary novelists such as Ian McEwan, Anne Tyler and John Updike, Paul uses vivid images to make the reader feel as though they are right there in the story. The Girl on the Pier will appeal to lovers of psychological thrillers and suspense novels.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 janvier 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781784627461
• Langue: English

Extrait

A Novel
For the missing.
Acknowledgements
With special thanks to Mark Lynch, Kate Ware and Palomi Kotecha.
Further thanks to Neil Wheelhouse, Neil Burke, Mark Allan, Jules Jackson, Carol Anderson, Chris Hadley, Damien Parsonage, Chris Rowland, Claire Clifton, Mairead Mooney, Eve White, Matthew Young, Daniel Rhodes, everyone at Cornerstones, Roberto Rodriguez, Araminta Hall, plus the fine folk at Matador.
Finally, an extra big thanks to my family, and anyone I ve so thoughtlessly forgotten.
Website: www.paultomkins.com
Email: [e-mail]
Copyright 2015 Paul Tomkins
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A part from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador Unit 9 Priory Business Park Kibworth Beauchamp Leicester LE8 0RX, UK Tel: ( 44) 116 279 2299 Fax: ( 44) 116 279 2277 Email: [e-mail] Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

ISBN 978 1784627 461
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Part Two
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
There is love of course. And there s life, its enemy.
Jean Anouilh
The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
Francis Bacon
ONE
The sea surges across the shingle with the clack of a billion ricocheting billiard balls as she - this woman who transfixes me - floats past. I linger, looking through the crowd that throngs the promenade of Brighton beach; admiring her grace, her style, her natural beauty. I feel my pulse throb in my throat - its jugular thrum - and in my gullet sense my half-swallowed heart.
She turns, heads my way. I breathe deep as she passes, inhaling her scent: a mix of lotion, perfume, peppermint and seaside sweat. It stirs chemicals deep within my brain, strikes a primordial chord. She leans on the balustrade; I move to stand behind her, to one side, and pretend to look at a leaflet pulled from my pocket, acting the bemused tourist. Gulls - large, fierce - circle and call overhead. She turns. I take her in with forensic observation: arching eyebrows, naturally full lips, faintly olive skin, broad brown eyes that open wide between sweeping lashes. Stray hairs, escaped from pigtails, blow about her face, and she swats them away like flies. Graceful, but not ornamental.
Ninety-three: the year, the temperature. More than two decades have now passed, yet in my mind it is still the present day. I close my eyes, and it s happening . I hear strains of music through the fuzzy earphones of her Walkman. I recognise the dark, brooding tune, but cannot place it.
I want to touch her - this total stranger. The urge is incredible. I am moments away from an arrestable offence. But I am not a threat to her safety; just a man who, for a split-second, has the wilfulness of a two-year-old child who doesn t want to take no for an answer. Why can t I have her?
Just because. Just because.
The sea breeze blows a bead of sweat from her shoulder onto my face - a millimetre from my bottom lip, so I trail my tongue to taste the salt: a speck of saline heaven. Perhaps it is sea spray? No - it is her: her taste. I ve not yet spoken to her, but I ve already tasted her.
Checking her reflection in a compact, she doesn t engage the mirror for longer than is necessary; looking for a blemish, rather than admiring herself. She flicks something from her cheek, snaps down the lid. Done. It is at this point that I hear a cry, a strange guttural sob, and mistake it for the call of a seagull. I turn to see a boy standing alone, his cheeks ruddy beneath a blond bowl haircut. Bolt upright, almost statuesque, he wails with hands outstretched at the end of straight, quivering arms. I m guessing he is six or seven years old, although I ve never been good at determining children s ages. Passing tourists ignore his distress, unwilling to investigate a sadness that must have a simple remedy - kids cry, and sooner or later the parents intervene. Or maybe they are the other kind of passer-by, those who simply don t care. But the young woman is different. She sees that he is alone, and I can tell from her quickly altered expression that she senses a larger sorrow, an all-cutting pain; desolation, abandonment, the things that make us howl. With purpose she moves in, a saintly presence on the shingle. She hunkers down to meet him eye-to-eye; the denim of her jeans drawn taut across her buttocks, small ankle socks revealed as the turn-ups rise upon her shins.
I see her ask him a question. Her head tilts, an ear offered to the boy, but his reply is blurted out - too eager to have his words heard, too upset to do so with controlled breaths. Unable to speak clearly, he vomits staccato syllables. Again, a calming gesture. Again, reassurance. She wipes a tear from his eye, takes his hand. For a moment I think of offering assistance, but worry that I ll ruin her rescue mission, which she handles with an assuredness beyond her years.
She stands, leads the boy in the direction of the Palace Pier. I am about to move to keep up with the unfolding drama when a frantic mother appears on the scene, and clasps her son with suffocating force. In that second the panic recedes.
This is all it takes to confirm love at first sight. But what is that? Nothing more than lust, coupled with an overactive imagination? I can tell many things from the way this girl moves, the expressiveness of her mouth (I have already seen it turn up at the corners with miraculous geometry, as if elevated by abnormally-developed cheek muscles), the alertness darting from her eyes. It gives me a sense of her inner soul - or what I perceive to be her inner soul. In truth, everything I know about her, beyond the physical, and one single act of heart-warming kindness, is my imagination filling in the blanks. It is easy to experience such heady feelings for someone when instilling in them your every wished-for characteristic. She is merely a blank canvas.
The time: I need to be somewhere. And so I have to let her go -- open my hands to set free the butterfly flapping against my palms, tickling my skin. But an indelible mark has been made on this, a day that will irrevocably change my life. Everything will forever lead back to this morning, when I took a walk along a seafront that would never let me leave.
TWO
I peeled a slither of Sellotape from the back of my hand; feeling it as keenly as flaying a layer of skin. I held the crinkled strip up to the light, staring at the arrangement of fine black hairs trapped like gnats on flypaper, and the mottled dust marks containing my DNA. I d planned to repair a precious item, damaged five hours earlier in a violent marital struggle. Instead, I embalmed myself in transparent sticky tape.
Setting down the roll in temporary defeat, I returned my gaze to the mess of a lifeless face laid out on the bloodstained carpet. I studied the familiar features, slashed in rabid anger, scarred and disfigured, ripped and torn. Supine on the bedroom floor, pigtailed hair draped across her shoulders, she remained slumped where she fell in the early hours of the morning; one unmoving eye staring inquisitively back, asking What did I do to deserve such unremitting brutality? but unable to receive any kind of reply.
Uncomfortably cross-legged, I swore beneath my breath. The painting laid out in front of me - a portrait of a young woman, by an artist only at the fringes of fame - seemed determined to remain beyond repair. Having already spent ten minutes trying to stick it back together - stick her back together - I experienced only abiding failure. Utterly unable to avoid getting in a tangle with the Sellotape, I flicked and flicked as it clung to my fingers, and then, when I pulled it free, watched it curl worm-like up against itself. If I managed to prise a piece apart and straighten it out I found all tack lost. Eight or nine consecutive times I d wasted a strip, and now the end of the roll had vanished; the scrape of a thumbnail unable to locate it as I twirled and twirled. Adrenaline burned my veins, my hands shaking. I d only managed to stick together two pieces of matching canvas. A restorer would be appalled.
The portrait, of course, lay beyond repair. Painted only a decade earlier by Jacob Dyer, its worth - little more than a couple of thousand pounds in prime condition - vanished with this sudden and devastating alteration, reducing its price to less than that of its frame. But the elimination of its monetary value was not the issue.
A painting, worth so much more than a mere work of art.
* * *
The early hours of that morning came back via muddled memories, taking shape like slow-developing Polaroids. Every thirty seconds another shocking tableau gained resolution, pouring out from the mist.
Sprawled on the mattress, tangled in bedclothes, I heard the sound of vomiting drifting through the half-open en-suite bathroom door; repetitive jerks followed by rasping attempts to clear the throat and unblock the no