Chapter Eighteen
Karl’s 18th
My mobile didn’t work in Nan’s house. No reception. I suspected Nan, but it was more likely just the huge dense lump of Brocklow hill. However, when I went a hundred yards down the road in the rain to the call box, with its smell of wet dog and its single card advertising Agricultural Parts, my mobile blinked into life. I rang the number I’d been given, expecting an answerphone, but instead got put through to DI Cole.
“I’ve found out something about Becki. I think she was dealing drugs.”
“Okay, Elanor. Can you tell me your reasons for thinking that?” Her brisk, motherly voice made me want to gulp and spill out everything from my missed childhood onwards. I resisted and kept it brief.
“Somebody told me they used to buy tranquillisers off her. Diazapam.”
“Yes, we were aware she sold drugs at times.”
“You knew?”
“It doesn’t seem to be especially secret. A couple of the younger club members have told us that Becki offered them Ecstasy in a nightclub on more than one occasion. At cost price. She sounded like an enthusiastic user rather than a professional dealer.”
Ecstasy? As well as whizz and diazepam? Enthusiastic, all right.
“Well, this was on a regular basis,” I said.
“Who was she selling it to?”
“Somebody’s wife.” It was only class C, but still.
“That would be Mrs Egan, I expect.”
“Oh, shit.”
“It was she who suggested Becki’s involvement in drugs to us in the first place,” the motherly voice said. “Do you think her husband is aware of her dependence?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought so.” AnneMarie’s furtiveness suggested not. What would Niall have thought of Becki feeding his wife drugs?
“One other thing, Elanor, while you’re there. Do you recall if Becki had a bag or purse with her on the evening of her death?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t notice. I suppose she would have left it behind the bar. She sometimes had a shoulder-bag, but I don’t think she carried much money.” I thought of all those carelessly scrawled IOUs.
“Did you see her with a bag or a purse that night?” she repeated.
“Not that I remember. But I might remember wrong.”
“Thank you.” She sounded faintly resigned. “We have in fact found a shoulder-bag that has been identified as hers, but no purse.”
“Do you think she was robbed?”
“I can’t say. If you remember or learn of any further information, I’ll be very grateful to hear from you.”
“Have you found anything else out? I mean, about my brother’s friends…”
“We’re not ready to make an arrest just yet,” she said. “Elanor, this case is not necessarily drugs-related.”
“It is. I got an anonymous letter, postmarked Manchester.”
Her voice sharpened. “A letter? Can you bring it in?”
“I don’t have it any more. But I’m sure it was from one of them.”
She said with weary patience, “We have, as a matter of fact, interviewed a number of your brother’s associates. We are not as idle as you seem to think.”
“And?”
“Two of the likeliest suspects were in a police van at the time of the murder. Several more were drinking together in a Manchester club. They have alibis.”
“There’ll be others,” I said. “He’ll have associates you haven’t even heard of.” And that I hadn’t heard of either.
“Unless you can give us names or addresses, Elanor, I’m afraid that part of our investigation has reached a dead end.”
“It’s Lannie,” I said, and closed the call with a jab of my finger.
I had no names – apart from Peel, which I didn’t think was even his real name – and no addresses either. I felt useless and frustrated. Needing comfort, I tried to ring Charlotte, but she was out, again.
Anyway, she would be needing comfort even more than me. She was the one who’d been harassed, hers was the shop that had been laid waste; hers the brother whose birthday had been blighted.
I stared unseeing out of the phone-box’s grimy window, remembering how efficiently Charlotte had coped when Hugh got himself involved with drugs. Far better than I had coped with Karl.
She’d rung me one afternoon, desperately anxious because Hugh had suffered a panic attack at work and had to be brought home by a colleague. When I went round he was jumpy and paranoid, accusing us to trying to lock him in a non-existent cellar and refusing to sit down in case we tied him to the chair. He flung away the coffee I made him, shouting that it was poisoned: he was convinced we’d put the evil eye on him and filled the kitchen with cameras. He smashed the lights over the sink and threw the telephone out of the window. We had to talk to him all night, following him as he raved and stumbled round his flat, until we worked out what had been going on.
Charlotte was brilliant. She treated Hugh with the patient, loving firmness I never managed with Karl. She persuaded him into rehab and paid for most of it herself – I chipped in too, Hugh’s savings having been snorted – and then she fixed it with his workplace and even somehow persuaded them to devise a fictional business trip as cover, because Daddy must never know.
By comparison, I had failed with Karl. Failed dismally. I had no excuses, I reflected grimly, stamping back through the puddles to Nan’s house. When Karl was thirteen and I found that first stash of cannabis in his pocket, I did nothing, because at the time he was neither talking nor listening to me, and although I’d been suspecting for a while, it could have been a lot worse. At least Karl was still going to school, most of the time: if I confronted him he might just kick school, and me, into touch altogether. So I let it be.
When I found the first E, a year later, I tried to talk to him. He raged out of the house and didn’t come back for three panic-stricken days. So I let it be, again. A few months after that I moved out into my first tiny flat-share and only called back home once a week or so. Even that felt like too often.
To tell the truth, I wanted to be free of Karl, and Mikey, and my mother. I was so weary of all the endless hassle and worry. I told myself Karl would be all right in the end. He finished school – even did a couple of exams – and signed up for sixth-form college, where he studied vehicle repair for a few weeks. Then he got kicked out.
I don’t know why. He never told me. I expect he just got bored and disruptive: by then he’d already been arrested and cautioned a few times for defacing property, anti-social behaviour. It was never his fault, according to Karl, and I was past caring. I didn’t have time to care. I had enough on my plate with Mikey, who wasn’t coping with High School. The High School had rapidly learned to refer all problems to me rather than to our mother, and I was getting phone calls every week. Mikey had thrown a wobbler, he’d been in a fight, he’d hidden in the science cupboard and refused to come out. I was fed up of it all. I wanted to escape, and I found my sanctuary at the Huntly Hotel.
I was chef de partie there, my first big job in a decent place. I felt myself becoming a real person in the real world under the severe eye of Pascal, the head chef, neat, precise and strict. Never mind that his French accent was bogus – I’d stood behind him at the post office and heard him mail a parcel in pure Brummie – he was a good master, and I was happy.
Until one evening, late on, when the head waiter entered the kitchen for a huddled consultation with Pascal, who came over to me, frowning.
“The party at table nine,” he said in his unlikely accent, “are causing a small disturbance. I gather they know you, Miss Herron. They are reluctant to leave until you grace them with your presence.”
I delegated my sauce and went out into the dining room. At this hour, it was only a quarter full: there were a few over-dressed couples who’d been to the theatre, a brace of tired businessmen, and at table nine, like a pack of foxes in a dog show, lounged half a dozen low-life, amon
gst them my brother Karl.
It was his eighteenth birthday. I’d posted him some money, then thought no more about it.
“Happy birthday, Karl,” I said. He nodded and smiled. It was nice to see him looking happy. They’d all had the steak: the French beans were pushed around their plates. Now they were on lager.
“Give him a kiss, then,” said the only other guy I knew – though not well – as Jez, a big, flashy loudmouth who drove a different second-hand car each month and wore more gold than a dowager duchess. Clunky chain, bracelet, watch, heavy signet rings on the hand which groped me under my chef’s whites as I obediently bent to kiss Karl. I parked myself on a chair out of his reach.
“Yay, sis,” said Karl, slurring slightly. He was blissful. His eyes were each looking in different directions. Karl didn’t call me Sis. For the last two years he hadn’t called me anything at all.
“Had a good birthday?”
“Yay.”
“We’ve been treating him,” said Jez.
“That’s nice. What with?”
“Tequila and coke.”
“What sort of coke?”
“Tut tut! Suspicious minds,” said Jez, shaking his head. “Not very grateful, is she, Peel?”
“No,” said Peel. He had a narrow, pale, unsmiling face and narrow, pale eyes that darted continually around at the diners, the waiters, and the doorman Luther who was impassive in the corner but who I knew was watching for my signal. Usually, however, Luther only had the odd pair of drunks to deal with; I didn’t think he could cope with six of them.
“What sort of coke?” I said again, pleasantly.
“Freebase,” said the guy on Karl’s other side.
“Shut it,” snapped Peel.
I was horrified, but tried to stay as impassive as Luther.
“He’s still pretty high,” I said, watching Karl gaze dreamily at nothing. “When was that?”
“Oh, he came down a bit hard,” said Jez casually, “so we topped him up with summat else.”
“What was that, then?” Karl was off the dials. I hoped it was nothing worse than speed.
“Can it,” snarled Peel, his eyes flickering to the waiter, Serg, hovering behind me.
“Don’t worry, he’s just one of them thicko refugees,” said Jez dismissively, “doesn’t understand a word we say. Do you, Dickhead?” All the others, except Peel, laughed. “Hey there, Miguel, whatever, bottle of brandy, comprendo?”
“Brandy?” repeated Serg, who had a degree in engineering but little English. He looked wary.
“Cognac, dumbo! Your best stuff. What’s the matter, think we can’t pay?” Jez pulled a wodge of banknotes from his pocket and riffled his thumb through them ostentatiously before selecting a few twenties. There might have been a thousand quid there, maybe two. He glanced at me, no doubt hoping to see my eyes out on stalks. But it was Peel’s hungry, calculating eyes that were watching him.
“Put it away,” he ordered coldly, and Jez shrugged and did so.
“It’s good to see you, Karl,” I said. “I’m surprised you came in here, though. I thought a curry down in Rusholme would be more your scene.” Karl used to love curry.
“Yeah, sure,” said Karl, though I don’t think he knew what he was agreeing to.
“What, spend his eighteenth in some shite-hole where you don’t even know what you’re eating? We thought we’d bring him somewhere classy,” said Jez.
“It’s not that smart,” said Peel, his contemptuous gaze roving over the Huntly’s understated décor. “Thought this was supposed to be a top joint, the way your kid goes on about it.”
“Does he?”
“My fucking sister this, my fucking sister that,” said Peel.
I wanted to hear more, and to know if the fuckings originated with Karl, but he went on: “This is it, then, this craphole? You just cook all day for these fucking herberts?”
“Sure,” I said lightly. “What do you do?”
“Gentlemen of leisure, us,” said Jez, sprawling. The brandy arrived and he pulled the bottle off Serg to slosh into the glasses.
“Do any of you work, then?” I asked the group.
“I’m a delivery driver,” volunteered one.
“He’s a wanker,” said Jez. All the others snickered, apart from Peel.
“Are you still job-hunting, Karl?” I had to repeat the question before he could answer, not quite coherently.
“Airport, arn I.”
“Baggage handling. He starts tomorrow,” Peel confirmed.
“Well, good for you, Karl,” I said.
“Might as well be a fucking pit pony,” said Jez, shaking his head.
“Nah, it’s all right there,” corrected Peel. “Opportunities there, know what I mean?”
I checked my watch. “It’s nearly tomorrow now. What time are you getting him home?”
“Ah, she’s worried about him,” said Jez. “The diddums.” Laughter, except from Peel, who said,
“So she should be. She’s his fucking sister.”
“I’ve got to get back to the kitchen now.” I’d had enough. “I’ll see you, Karl.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Karl, from somewhere up in the clouds. Jez waved me away, but Peel, as I passed him, caught my wrist and pulled me down to whisper in my ear. His grip was tight and bony.
“I don’t think you’re so hot,” he hissed, while Jez was joking with the others.
“Neither do I,” I said, surprised.
“No? Then why do you treat him like a tit-head?”
“I don’t.”
“Don’t you?” His cold eyes accused me. “According to you he’s a fucking numpty.”
“I’ve never called Karl that. Did he say that?”
“Screwed up, he is,” said Peel. “You screw him up any more, I’ll do you.” His grip tightened painfully, then let me go at last.
I hesitated, wanting to deny it, to speak to Karl, who couldn’t hear; to prove Peel wrong. But I knew there would be no point trying to prove anything to Peel.
As I backed away, he was reaching over to shake Karl gently and offer a brandy to his lips. I wished then, too late, that I’d taken the day off, so Karl could have spent his birthday with me instead of this lot: but of course he would most likely have refused.
So I still let it be. Karl was an adult. He didn’t want my advice or my interference. The next time I saw him, he couldn’t even remember that evening in the Huntly and we were back on non-speaking terms again.
I’d failed him, I thought, as I let myself back into Nan’s house. I’d known what was going on, and I’d turned a blind eye. Part of me had been terrified of what could happen: my little brother smoking his way into oblivion, popping his way into paranoia, choking on his own vomit, laying about him with a machete...
But I brushed my fears under the carpet, told myself that wouldn’t happen. Karl had too much sense. I couldn’t keep harrying him. It wouldn’t help anyway.
The truth is, I didn’t want to know. So I hadn’t done all the things I should have done. Moved back home. Kept an eye on him. Bribed him to go to college. Got him up every morning for that airport job, so that he would have lasted there more than a month.
Or maybe I should have dobbed him in years ago for possession. Grass. Snitch. Traitor.
I paused in Nan’s brown hall to lean against the door and close my eyes. When had Becki started? Why in God’s name hadn’t her family done anything? Maybe they had tried, like me; or maybe they had never known. Blinded by innocence. They’d been spared the dreadful necessity of grassing on her.
So I’d gone and grassed her up instead, now that it was too late. But I distrusted my own motives. Was it really AnneMarie that I was telling on, because I didn’t approve of her drugs habit? Was I trying to force her to get the help that was denied Becki – or did I just think she was a tit-head, a numpty, who needed teaching a lesson?
I trudged heavily into the kitchen, sat down and rubbed my eyes.
Something was wo
rrying me. Becki had despised AnneMarie. And though I had grassed on Becki, AnneMarie had got there first, and spilt her secrets, according to DI Cole.
Yet AnneMarie called Becki the salt of the earth. Praise the dead, I thought. Speak no evil. Especially if you might end up a murder suspect...
But I knew that sometimes addicts loved their dealers as much as their fix; and hated them with equal passion when they couldn’t get it. Chained by need and contempt, like a bad marriage. I’d seen desperate users begging their dealers, promising double, triple the money tomorrow, cringing and reckless and vengeful: sometimes violent.
I didn’t like the way my thoughts were going. AnneMarie couldn’t have attacked Becki. Nobody could have attacked Becki apart from Peel and his malignant pack of rats.
All the same. I had to look at all the possibilities, to be clear about them in my head, if only so I could dismiss them. I pulled an ancient calendar off its hook, turned it over and wrote the heading SUSPECTS at the top. Soon I had a list:
SUSPECTS
Name Motive
Sue I don’t like her.
KK Big and crazy.
Niall Ditto.
AnneMarie Small and crazy. Drugs.
Tamara Jealousy.
Frank A bit strange. Hoards bloodstains
Brendan ?? Not sure yet.
I hadn’t yet been bold enough to ask Brendan if he was all right. I didn’t want to hear what he might tell me.
But if something had gone on with him and Becki, I had to have him on the list. I had to have them all on the list. Becki had riled KK and quite possibly Niall, despite their close dances; she might well have riled Frank too, by insisting on his being gay. She’d given both Tamara and AnneMarie cause to feel aggrieved by leching over their men, though hardly enough to incite them to murder. But AnneMarie might have been crazed by her need for drugs. Only Sue, as far as I could tell, had no reason to dislike Becki at all.
It was a bloody useless list. All it told me was that I considered an unreasonable number of people to be crazy. And it was too short by about a dozen people, from Hugh and Charlotte right down to Niall’s kids, all of whom had even less motive for murder than the ones I’d written down.
“It’s rubbish,” I told Nan. “None of them did it. It was meant to be me.”
There was a huge thump from the hall. For a heady moment I thought Nan had found a way to reply. Then I went to the front door and found Arthur banging on it with a stick, from his perch on the rusty tractor which was pulled up on the pavement. He bellowed over the engine’s irregular clatter.
“You’re needed at the Woolpack!”
“What’s up?”
“All a to-do. Rhoda’s off her head. The old bother coming up again, if you ask me.”
“Okay, won’t be a minute.” I thought Arthur was offering me a lift, but by the time I returned to the door with my coat he was chugging away up the road, the perky dog beside him pricking up its ears like two fingers.
So I splashed through the puddles to the Woolpack and went in through the back. The kitchen was deserted, and flooding. There was a good half-inch of water swilling around on the floor, and a thin stream pouring through a crack in the lean-to roof. The ovens were cold.
I assumed this was the crisis, but there was nobody around to deal with it. The bar was unmanned. Fay and Stu didn’t do Sundays, but Rhoda was usually fussing around the kitchen long before I came in. She saw the roasts as her personal responsibility.
Fetching the broom, I began to swoosh water out through the door. There must have been gallons of it. I put a bucket under the leak, then stood on a chair outside to slide a couple of baking trays over the crack and weigh them down with stones. The stream hesitated before turning into spaghetti-like drips that grew gradually shorter and shorter. I emptied the bucket and swooshed a few more pints of water off the floor.
With the flood more or less under control, I went back into the bar, which was still empty. Upstairs I heard voices arguing. It was gone eleven, so I unlocked the front door and took off the bar towels.
Then, since no-one came either in or down, I returned to the kitchen and mopped the wet floor, this time with detergent, until it was clean enough to please even Rhoda. When I had finished, I found Brendan standing behind the bar with one hand motionless on the pump, like a man lost and frozen in a strange landscape.
“Brendan?”
He came to life. “Lannie! Thanks for coming over. Rhoda’s not too good.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“She’s been chucking up,” said Brendan, “wanted to come down, but I wouldn’t let her. Luckily the girls are at her Mum’s.” He stared at the pump as if he couldn’t remember what it was for.
“I’ve mopped up the kitchen, and put a tray over the leak.”
He nodded vigorously. “Good, good. That’s fine. Excellent. That’ll keep it.”
“Under control.”
“Absolutely. What leak is that?”
“In the kitchen. Water coming through the roof. I’ve mopped it up.”
“Oh, right.”
“Do you need to go back to Rhoda?”
Brendan looked at me for a long moment as if he didn’t know what I was for, either.
“Yes, I will,” he said at last. “You can hold the fort, can’t you, Lannie? Shout if you need me. What day is it, Sunday?”
“All day.”
“Fine,” he said, and took himself off. I heard no more argument, just the faintest echo of quiet voices. Rhoda would never shout once she knew I was in the pub.
I stood at the bar and shifted glasses for a bit, then retreated into the kitchen – the floor now being mostly dry – and concocted a recipe: lemon and ginger mousse. I didn’t bother with the roast. If anyone demanded Sunday lunch, they could have ham.
In fact I served only five people that lunchtime. There was a trio of disconsolate hikers with the usual walking guide and the usual complaints about the mire they had to negotiate crossing Arthur’s land.
“It’s a right of way,” they grumbled. “It shouldn’t be in that state.”
“It’s a right of way for the cows as well,” I pointed out, although I knew exactly why Arthur drove his cows along that route. Then the Killick brothers came in for their pasties.
“Two pints of coffee, two hot Cornish please Lannie,” said Gary. “On your own today?”
“Brendan’s around. Rhoda’s not too good.”
“Ah. Shame, that.” He thoughtfully spooned four sugars into his coffee.
“Heard the latest from Himself?” asked Tom.
“Niall? I saw him yesterday. He didn’t seem too happy.”
“Oh aye, he’s got his outsize knickers in a twist all right. Worried about the club losing money.”
“Is it?”
Tom shrugged. “The latest is he’s planning a memorial match in honour of Becki. A fund-raising day. He rang up this morning to tell us all about it.”
“Bloody cheek,” said Gary in a spray of crumbs. “Making money out of Becki’s death.”
“A bit soon, isn’t it?” I said. “What will her parents think?”
“God knows. I doubt if he’ll consult them.”
“Doubt if it’ll make much difference if he does,” added Tom. The two of them downed their coffees faster than I would have thought safe, and disappeared. Once the glum hikers had left, I returned to the kitchen to go through the week’s menus and list the orders. After a while I heard Brendan locking up, though it wasn’t yet two o’clock.
He was slumped in a chair watching a video with the sound turned right down. Rugby, naturally. White versus blue, amid a whisper of cheers.
“I just need you to check the orders,” I said.
He barely glanced at them. “They’re fine. I’ll trust you to sort them out, Lannie. That’s your job now.”
“How’s Rhoda?”
“She’s having a kip.”
“
I made her a lemon and ginger mousse. It’s good for upset stomachs, if you can keep it down.”
“Good of you,” said Brendan sombrely.
“In the fridge.”
“Aye.”
I sat down next to him and stared at the video. Grim determination in the rain. Hair plastered, faces shouting wordlessly.
“What’s this?”
“World Cup semi in Sydney.” The players clawed for a line-out.
“Why not the final?”
“Winds me up too much.” With a deep sigh, Brendan closed his eyes. “Lannie, something I should tell you.”
I knew at once. “You don’t need me here any more.”
“What? No, nothing like that! I just said, didn’t I? You’re in charge. You’ve been, what’s the word, invaluable.” I knew this wasn’t true. “Better than the useless doombrain the brewery sent us when Rhoda had her op.” That was more like it.
“No, it’s about me and Rhoda,” Brendan continued heavily. “I’m telling you because it came up with the police and they might ask you.”
I felt a certain dread. “It concerns Becki, then.”
“I had an affair with her.” He stared at the screen, his small eyes unseeing.
“Uh huh.” I hoped it sounded surprised enough with being condemnatory. But I felt a bit sick.
“I’m not proud of it.” He shifted in his seat. “I don’t mean that against Becki, cracking lass, but it wasn’t right of me. It was when Rhoda first fell ill, but I didn’t know. She hadn’t told me. Didn’t tell anyone a thing. She went to see the doctor without saying owt and tried to deal with it all herself. I don’t understand why.”
“So you wouldn’t worry, probably.” Or so Rhoda herself wouldn’t worry, so she could shut it away. So she wouldn’t appear weak. So she wouldn’t lose control. Rhoda was proud.
“Maybe,” said Brendan heavily. “I should have guessed there was something wrong, though. But all I saw was Rhoda getting short and snappy and always tired, shouting at the kids, getting the orders wrong, and I got pissed off. I thought she was fed up with the place. I thought she wanted out.”
He paused the video. The players were caught on their toes, dangling from unseen strings.
“So I went down the club,” said Brendan, “and there was Becki, always cheerful, always full of life, ready to lend an ear. A good-time girl, wasn’t she, Becki?”
“She was.”
“The truth is, she reminded me of Rhoda at that age, when we first met. Lively, playful. She had that same twinkle in her eye. You never saw Rhoda when she was well.”
“But I know,” I said, remembering the glow on Rhoda’s face, the night before the murder.
“And I was flattered,” went on Brendan, “young lass like that, could have had the pick of the club. And, anyway. But I’m not proud of it.”
“It takes two,” I said, wondering if Becki had been proud of it. I thought she probably was. Give the guy a good time, she would have argued; get one over the snappy sour-faced wife, never mind about the kids. She barely knew them anyway. They didn’t matter.
“It takes two. Neither of us said no.” Brendan wearily released the frozen screen and buzzed it into fast-forward.
“Did Rhoda know?”
“Oh, aye. She found out. Somebody must have spilled the beans.”
“Who?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t tell anyone. I suppose I just wasn’t careful or clever enough. Never had an affair before – no practice. Rhoda waited till we were all locked up one night, and then she had it out with me. Told me about her illness, shouted it out like. Threw a few glasses and stuff. I sat there like a stunned sheep. And then I picked up all the bits of glass and made a cup of tea and lots of promises.”
“When was all this?”
“Finished it with Becki eight months ago. Been trying to make it right with Rhoda ever since. Pull things back together.”
“Brendan, how is Rhoda?”
“You know it’s cancer, don’t you? Frank said you knew. So nothing’s certain. The doctors seem fairly hopeful. They would, though, wouldn’t they, whatever? And the chemo’s hard. I wish I could do it for her. That’s what set her off just now. When she feels bad.”
He halted the video again: the end of the match, ecstasy and wretchedness.
“Should have been filmed in sepia,” said Brendan, “it faded so fast. All the good times go, eh, Lannie?”
“They come back again,” I said, although without conviction. I had to say it for Brendan’s sake; but as for my own good times, they’d slipped out of sight. If I hadn’t been quite on top of the world at Tzabo, at least it had felt as if I was climbing, before I shopped Karl and started on the long slide down, past Charlotte’s shop and all the way into the mud behind the wheelie bins.
And to cap it all, now I would have to go back to Nan’s freezing flat and add Rhoda’s name to my list.