To his credit, the storyteller’s skills extended beyond fancy dress.
However, Gardner’s mind was too plagued for focus, and Robert Thwaites, despite his athletic prancing, repertoire of facial expressions and a booming voice threatening to make the wooden beams in the ceiling drop, failed to entertain her.
Robert had commandeered the corner of the upstairs back room. It limited his show to a small treasure chest perched on a table, that he circled as he told his tale, pausing every now and again to jab and sweep at the air with a fake cutlass.
There were two filled tables and the remaining spectators stood. Fifteen patrons, including Robert’s wife, ex-Avon lady, Cassandra, who stood directly to the left of Gardner and O’Brien.
And what a time she was having!
She stared doe-eyed at her husband as he performed, her mouth moving in sync with the words he used. She looked like a teenage girl at a boy band concert!
‘Around me, around the cove,’ Robert stage whispered, moving closer to his small crowd. ‘Lay the bones of the greedy. Stark warnings to the likes of’ – he narrowed his unpatched eye and moved it closer to a middle-aged man as if to examine him – ‘the foolhardy.’
The audience laughed. So did the middle-aged man, although the sudden glow in his cheeks betrayed his embarrassment.
What a bloody pantomime.
Gardner looked at O’Brien who was laughing – surely she was faking amusement?
When she turned her attention back to the eccentric thespian, she felt O’Brien’s fingers stroking her own.
And then the dam that had kept her concerns and doubts penned back for the last couple of months finally collapsed.
She closed her hand into her fist and pulled it away. She then looked at her colleague apologetically. ‘We can’t do this.’
O’Brien’s face dropped.
Gardner opened her mouth to apologise, only for the storyteller to pick up volume. ‘Remember, patrons, this is an isle forsaken by men and maps. Many suspected, but never really knew, if Valentina’s curse was indeed a great bounty, or a trap ready to claim their lives. Do you not recall, mates, the warnings that it was her enduring love and passion for someone she could never have that led to her downfall? How could anyone trust such a great treasure?’
Gardner was glad she’d been interrupted by the thespian; her apology would surely have been pathetic.
She took a deep breath to stem the inner turmoil she was feeling while the tale of this old seadog’s adventures continued in a swashbuckling, grandiose fashion. And, although the surrounding punters were lapping it up, expressing themselves with guffaws and the occasional cheer, Gardner become more and more tempted to remove herself from the pub.
But when she glanced at the sadness in O’Brien’s face again, she decided that leaving now would only intensify her disappointment and the embarrassment. So, she drank from her pint glass, hoping that more alcohol would steady her need to flee.
‘…and it was this dream that told me that the treasure… the vast treasure… had been tucked within a chapel ruin.’ He swigged ale from another of his props – a tarnished metal tankard. He purposefully let the ale run down over his chin and down his front.
Cue more raucous guffaws.
‘And naught but silence and spiders guarded it.’
While Robert mimicked the creak of the chapel doors, the skitter of the spiders and the sound of his own steps, Gardner leaned over to O’Brien’s ear and whispered, ‘Let’s go down; we need to talk.’
‘I want to watch the show,’ O’Brien whispered. She didn’t turn to look at Gardner.
I’ve hurt her. ‘Okay… after?’
‘I thought you might have somewhere to be.’ O’Brien didn’t bother whispering this time.
There was a woman’s voice behind Gardner. ‘Shhh… I’m trying to listen.’
‘Sorry,’ Gardner whispered over her shoulder, without looking back to see the offended party.
‘My hands,’ the storyteller continued, holding them up to his audience. ‘My hands, gnarled as the ancient driftwood that lines the shores of this isle.’ He turned from the audience and went around the side of the table, and to another prop: a wooden treasure chest. ‘My hands hovered above the bounty, the curse…’ He raised an eyebrow and turned to smirk at the small crowd. ‘The mystery.’
There were murmurs of excitement from several of the listeners. Gardner was desperate to move to O’Brien’s ear again and whisper more apologies. But not only would she incur more wrath from O’Brien, but she now had a frustrated patron just behind her too.
Gardner felt her stomach cramp. She dealt with the discomfort with two mouthfuls of ale.
Robert still had his hands over his fake treasure chest, and was letting them quiver dramatically, as if it was a source of supernatural energy. Gardner suddenly felt irritated by him.
She closed her eyes and took another deep breath. Give him a break, Emma. Yes, this wasn’t her bag, but her irritation was because of her own conduct this evening and not this well-meaning showman.
She opened her eyes and cast another glance at O’Brien, who still looked annoyed, and then over to Cassandra. Her hand was to her mouth as if the tension over what was in the chest was tearing her in two. Ridiculous really from someone who must have seen this performance a thousand times.
Again, harsh, Emma!
This was a family business – Cassandra probably considered it a job to help with the atmosphere. If she was kicking back at the bar, drinking the profits and rolling her eyes, wouldn’t that be more ridiculous?
Finally, Robert moved his bloody hands down to the treasure chest and traced the cheap stainless-steel latches. He suddenly looked up, wide-eyed. ‘Hear that thunder! Believe me all – the curse is real! A storm had arrived that could sink a thousand ships.’ He held a finger in the air. ‘Never again would I underestimate the power of unrequited love, and neither should you.’ He lowered his finger, took a loud deep breath and closed his eyes. ‘And then, I doubted whether I could go on. Something was not as it should be. My memories of that story. Of Captain Raphael Duarte’s head being torn from his shoulders. All semblance of God was gone from Valentina’s world. What was I doing here? At the bounty of evil?’ He flicked back one of two latches. ‘And yet I couldn’t stop myself. The mystery was too great. What had the wretched pirate queen placed in here before her final breath?’ His hand hovered over the second latch. He looked at the audience. ‘You…’ He pointed at the man he’d embarrassed earlier. ‘Would you’ve opened it?’
‘No,’ the man said, laughing nervously, and looking at his partner.
‘Not even for riches and rewards? I think the chance of the abyss may be a risk worth taking. I opened it… Do you wish to know what I found?’
‘Yes,’ the man said meekly, looking awkward. Gardner saw his partner nudge him. ‘I do. Yes, I do!’ the man said, loudly, forced to enter into the spirit of the thing before shaming him and his wife.
Gardner’s phone buzzed in her pocket.
‘Now… we must all be silent,’ Robert boomed.
Gardner took her phone from her pocket. The image from Cecile had arrived.
‘So, I flicked the second latch.’ He gasped. ‘All the while contemplating what awaited me. Jewels… gold… coins?’
Gardner had to force back a gasp of her own as she stared at the photograph of a dishevelled, emaciated man sitting on a garden wall of a decrepit terrace house, swigging from a Coke bottle. His hair was long, and he was unshaven, but it was unmistakably him.
‘Or would this lost soul, consumed by her own darkness, have left a void?’ A thumping sound made Gardner flinch and she looked up. Robert bashed his own chest. ‘My heart was thrashing.’
Exactly how I feel.
It was him. Riddick.
Her mind whirred. She didn’t know what she felt.
Relief that she’d found him?
Despair over the fact that he looked more broken than ever?
Robert threw back the lid of the chest.
Riddick was alive… he was alive… alive!
‘It was the head!’ Robert shouted, reaching into the chest. ‘The missing head… Captain Raphael Duarte’s head!’
There were murmurs of astonishment from the crowd.
Gardner leaned over to O’Brien, who looked as far removed from the tension and drama in the performance as anyone could be. ‘I’ve got to go… Sorry, something incredibly urgent—’
‘Shit… Christ,’ Robert hissed. ‘Shit!’
Gardner turned in time to see Robert pulling a skull from the chest before recoiling, releasing the grip on his prop. It fell back into the chest with a clatter.
There were more gasps and guffaws from the crowd over Robert’s revelation.
However, the image of her wasted former colleague hunched over on a garden wall completely distracted Gardner. She desperately needed to get out of here. ‘I’m sorry, Lucy.’ She turned to leave.
Robert’s voice was growing in volume. As were the number of obscenities used. ‘What the hell? What the hell is that doing in there?’
Realising Robert had clearly slipped out of character, Gardner swung back in time to see him throw himself back against the wall, staring wide-eyed at the treasure chest.
Gardner felt her instincts kicking in.
Something’s very wrong here.
But the crowd didn’t think so. They were enjoying his performance of shock and horror, clapping and guffawing.
The drama hadn’t been this good before; nowhere near. To go up so many notches in quality could mean only one thing…
She confirmed it by looking over at Cassandra. Gone were the doe-eyes and the fangirl response. She, too, was stunned.
‘That’s a real sodding skull!’ Robert shouted.
Confirmation…
Gardner marched over to the treasure chest and stared down.
Indeed, the skull was no cheap prop.
She turned and watched Robert edging around the wall, past the window, which showed the market square Christmas tree in all its glory, to Cassandra’s side. ‘That’s not mine… I didn’t put that in there…’ he shouted over to Gardner.
The noise from the crowd quietened. The penny was dropping.
She turned and saw one old couple still clapping at the table. Robert Thwaites looked like he was going to keel over from a heart attack, for pity’s sake!
And Gardner, herself, had just broken the fourth wall.
Gardner, who still had her phone in her hand, exchanged it for her badge in her pocket. She held it up. ‘DCI Emma Gardner.’
Silence descended, but people still glanced at one another, perhaps confused over whether this was part of the show.
It’d be a very random show, Gardner thought. ‘I’d like everybody to go downstairs please, quietly, and slowly. Nobody is to leave.’
‘It’s not mine!’ Robert said, plucking off his eye patch.
Gardner looked at O’Brien. ‘Detective Constable, can you stay with the remains while I make the calls?’
‘Remains?’ Cassandra gasped.
O’Brien nodded. ‘Yes, boss.’