Bitter Blue

by Cath Staincliffe

  Sheila was back and I chatted to her while she made her tea. She was a mature student, studying for a degree in geology, and she was out a lot doing research for her current project.

  My phone interrupted the chat.

  Lucy Barker.

  My stomach contracted as she spoke and the hairs on my arms pricked.

  ‘I’m coming round,’ I said. I glanced across at Sheila, who nodded. She

  would be in until Ray got back, he had gone off on one of his timber buying trips.

  ‘You’re at home?’ I asked Lucy.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you stay there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  I put my phone away, collected my bag and coat, her desperate words echoing in my mind, inflaming my imagination.

  ‘There’s been another letter,’ she said, ‘and a parcel.’ And her voice broke.

  Chapter Seven

  you will DiE soon BItcH

  I swallowed. Closed my eyes briefly. The same technique as before: a mishmash of letters and fonts.

  ‘It was in your post box?’

  ‘When I got back from work.’

  ‘And a parcel?’

  She was clutching one hand to her mouth, the other was wrapped in a tea-towel.

  ‘Your hand?’

  Her eyes filled with tears. She moved her head slowly from side to side.

  ‘There was a razor blade.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’

  ‘And there was … it’s in there,’ she gestured to the kitchen. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’

  I went to look and she came with me, standing behind me as though I could shield her. On the counter was a manila jiffy bag, the sort lined with bubble wrap. No writing on it, the flap torn open. A razor blade and smears of blood on the counter top. The smell in there made me want to retch.

  ‘It’s dog shit,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, God! We have to report this.’

  ‘No.’

  I stared at her. I was surrounded by people refusing to involve the police.

  ‘Show me your hand.’

  She unwound the cloth. The top of two fingers were cut, as I looked fresh blood swelled in the thin slits.

  ‘Jesus Christ. Look at that,’ I told her. ‘That’s actual bodily harm.’

  ‘No,’ she squeaked and began to cry. I led her into the other room, away from the foul stench.

  ‘Have you got any plasters?’

  She shook her head. Rummaging in my bag, I unearthed two dinosaur plasters. Not quite Lucy Barker’s style but she let me put them over the cuts.

  ‘Look, when you got the first letter, there was a chance it could have been a mistake, or someone wanting to get back at you for something and that would be the end of it. Then there was a direct threat.’ I avoided using the words death threat though that’s what it was. ‘Now this. Not just to scare you but to actually hurt you. To cause physical damage. The police can do so much more: they can test for fingerprints, look at forensic evidence. My resources are very limited. Lucy, this is getting really nasty.’

  She had stopped crying. She was very still. ‘I was raped once,’ she said, matter of fact, staring ahead. ‘First term at college.’

  Oh Jesus. I kept quiet.

  ‘The tutor, the only person I told, she forced me to go to the police. It was like being raped all over again.’ She looked at me, her blue eyes bleak. ‘And they never even prosecuted him.’

  This is different, I wanted to say. You can’t base what you do for the rest of your life on one experience, however bad. But then who was I to judge? I needed to acknowledge what she’d just told me. ‘I’m sorry. That’s awful. But please think about it. I would come with you, stay with you ...’

  ‘No,’ she whispered.

  I exhaled.

  There was silence for a moment then I heard the front door bang and footsteps going upstairs.

  ‘Do you think there could be any connection?’ I asked her. ‘With the rape?’

  ‘No. The man’s dead now, he died a couple of years ago. He jumped off a motorway bridge.’

  I flinched.

  She still sat staring into space, dull. An effort to protect herself from what we were talking about.

  ‘Have you got a carrier bag?’

  ‘Yes,’ she blinked and got to her feet. In the kitchen she got me a bag. I used it like a glove to grasp the jiffy bag. I examined both sides but it was unmarked. Then I drew the carrier bag inside out, over the packet and tied it at the neck.

  ‘And freezer bags something like that?’ Intent on preserving some evidence, hoping I could change her mind about the police, I manoeuvred the razor blade into one and put the letter in another.

  ‘Let’s have a drink.’ I was keen to give her something practical to focus on to redirect her attention away from shock and introspection. I opened the window to air the kitchen and we took our drinks in the lounge.

  ‘What time did you get in?’

  ‘About seven.’

  ‘That’s later than usual?’

  ‘I said I’d cover for Sheena, the night receptionist. She’d got parents’ evening at her little boy’s school.’

  ‘And did you check the mail immediately?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened.’

  ‘I picked it up.’

  ‘What was on top?’

  ‘The packet and that letter,’ she nodded at the missive which lay unfolded on the coffee table, ‘under that was a bank statement.’

  ‘What time does your post usually come?’

  ‘About eleven.’

  So the hate mail was left afterwards. Between eleven and seven.

  ‘What time did you speak to Ian Hoyle?’

  She frowned, screwed up her eyes trying to remember. ‘Erm, just before lunch.’

  Maybe this was his response. To up the ante?

  ‘It can’t be Ian,’ she said. ‘He was at work all day.’

  ‘Lunch?’

  ‘Hospitality visit. Conference organisers wanting a look round.’

  ‘When did he leave?’

  ‘He was working late.’

  ‘Later than you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she turned to me, her words insistent and a little sharper now. ‘Later than me. We all have to do it now and again. Why do you keep on about Ian? It’s not Ian.’

  ‘He couldn’t have slipped away anytime today for an hour, forty minutes even?’

  She gave a little snort, exasperated. ‘It’s not impossible but really ...’

  She was so sure. Not me though. A suspicious nature comes with the territory.

  ‘Okay.’ Supposing Ian Hoyle was in the clear, I thought again about the circumstances we had to go on. ‘It’s Wednesday, a week since the last letter?’

  She nodded.

  Was the timing significant? It could point to someone who was free on a Wednesday. ‘Half-day closing.’ There were still some shops around Manchester that observed the old tradition of closing on a Wednesday afternoon to make up for staff having to work on Saturday. But the ones that did it tended to be small, local shops. ‘Do you know anyone who works in a shop, on a high street, has Wednesdays off?’

  She looked at me askance.

  Okay it was a bit of a reach but I was fumbling in the dark. Someone hated her, hated her so much they’d gone to these lengths.

  ‘Have you noticed anything different in the last day or two, anything odd, any friends or colleagues behaving out of character, suddenly avoiding you, anything off-balance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any sense of someone watching you or being followed.’

  ‘No.’

  I ran my hands through my hair. Rubbed at my neck.

  ‘What about the other people here. Who was in when you got back?’

  ‘Just Adam, I think. There was just his car here.’

  ‘Have you spoken to him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hang on.’
>
  I let myself out and crossed to the teacher’s door. When he answered, minus kitten, I asked him if he’d noticed anyone bringing mail after the morning delivery.

  ‘No. But I’ve only been back since five. Has something happened?’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t discuss it.’

  He pulled a face. ‘Have you tried the students?’

  ‘Were they in?’

  ‘Yes. I hear them moving about when they’re home.’

  I climbed the stairs and called on the students. They invited me in; I explained what had been going on. Had they been in during the day, noticed anyone coming?

  ‘We have been in,’ the man called Remi answered. ‘We have been waiting for someone to come to fix the television.’

  ‘He said he’d be here this afternoon,’ his friend Daniel told me, ‘so we are here all day and then he’s not showed up.’

  ‘We’ve been looking out sometimes too. No one came.’

  Well, someone must have but not their repairman.

  I thanked them and left a card with them as I had with the other clients asking them to call me if they noticed anything suspicious.

  ‘Agatha Christie,’ Remi said as he showed me out, ‘I like the books very much.’

  I smiled. I’d never read one.

  ‘But Miss Marple is a bit older than you, yes?’ He grinned.

  ‘Careful, now.’

  ‘Maybe she could find our television man,’ he told Daniel.

  I laughed.

  The warmth I felt from the interchange faded rapidly as I reported back to Lucy. No leads from the neighbours. The mood between us was sombre and a bit prickly.

  ‘Do you think I should stay at the hotel?’ she asked me.

  My instincts said no. If Ian Hoyle was involved then he might have engineered his offer to her and be preparing a trap, a third delivery here pushing her towards accepting his suggestion. No hate mail had been sent to the hotel and I was reasonably sure she was okay during working hours – hers was a very public role – but I didn’t want her there after hours.

  ‘No. Any friends who could put you up?’

  ‘Not really. I don’t ... people from work, they have families. I wouldn’t like to intrude …’

  It was an excuse. To mask a saddening admission. She had no friends. She’d never mentioned anyone outside work except for Benjamin, and the people she trusted at work were colleagues and nothing more. Lucy would never be invited for a meal with Pam Hertz or a few drinks with Malcolm Whitlow.

  ‘I could arrange for someone to come and stay here, if you wanted? A security guard. I can recommend him but you’d have to pay.’ Brian was my partner at self-defence classes. He’d left his job with a local supermarket after playing host to several armed robberies and had set up on his own. He was a nice lad and I hoped he’d make a go of it.

  ‘I don’t want to stay here.’

  ‘Bed and Breakfast, then. I know a place. It’ll do for a couple of nights.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll get some things together.’

  ‘I’m going to talk to Carly Jowett and if I’ve no luck there I’m going to try and trace the source of the letters used.’

  And I wanted another go at Ian Hoyle but I didn’t mention that.

  ‘Won’t that be difficult?’

  ‘Probably, yes. There’s someone I can ask about it. I think the trouble is, even if we trace the newspapers, like I said before, if they’re freely available over the counter then it doesn’t narrow the search much. And if nothing has turned up before then I’ll keep watch on this place next Wednesday; maybe there’s a pattern.’

  There must be some history behind it, I thought. Totally random vendettas are so rare. It was much more likely that Lucy Barker knew her enemy. That they had some reason, however skewed, to want to frighten her, threaten her.

  She seemed so alone: fiancé dead, no friends, family across the other side of the planet. I hadn’t warmed to Lucy Barker but I felt sorry for her, for the position she was in. No one but me to share her anxiety, to offer solace.

  ‘We don’t know who’s behind this or how serious it is but I think there are some basic precautions you should take.’ I tried to sound businesslike, not wanting to alarm her unduly with the prospect that someone might follow through on the threats they’d made. She looked at me and I glimpsed a flash of impatience in her eyes. Perhaps it came from the strained atmosphere, our disagreement about involving the police. Or maybe she had heard all this before, after the rape. Had been doing it ever since: always alert to personal safety, always minimising risks. If so, she must find me patronising.

  ‘Stop me if you know all this.’

  ‘No, carry on.’

  We went through all the obvious areas: answering the door, travelling, parking. Avoid isolated, ill-lit areas, if confronted: run, scream, avoid eye-contact. Be on the look out for anyone following you. Trust your instincts. Our bodies are often the first to sense danger, before our minds cotton on. And they are very accurate early warning systems.

  I gathered up the freezer bags. But there was no way I was going to hold on to a jiffy bag full of dog shit. ‘I’ll get rid of the package.’ I moved to the kitchen.

  ‘No, I will.’ She hurried ahead of me, picked up the carrier and took it outside to the bins. I shut and locked the window and then waited while she packed a bag. We’d need to think about a system for checking for monitoring her mail but it could wait till the next day; she was obviously shattered.

  We drove in convoy to the Bed and Breakfast. I saw her checked in. Back in my car I sat and let the tension drain from my arms and my shoulders, took a couple of deep breaths. I was uneasy. Something was nagging at me, something about the case. I tried to pin it down by scrolling through all the elements and hoping for a gut reaction, a clenching that told me where my concern lay: the hate letters, the razor blade, the person behind them, Lucy Barker’s refusal to go to the police, Ian Hoyle, the rape disclosure, my failure to make progress? Nothing clicked. But something lurked, veiled beneath the surface, something that disturbed me. I’d told Lucy Barker to listen to her instincts and knew I should follow my own advice. But how could I when all I had to go on was a vague sense of disquiet. How could I act on that? Resign from the case? Break client confidentiality and confide in the police? No.

  The unpleasant feeling remained with me while I drove home. I put on an old Astrid Gilberto tape, plenty of lilting melodies and lyrics in Portuguese. Nothing too demanding or strident. Hoping in vain that it might soothe away my worries.

  Chapter Eight

  Thursday morning I rang Carly Jowett and the woman who answered told me Carly was at work. Had she got the number? She had. ‘You’ll be lucky if they answer. They never bloody answer it, not for ages. Kwik Save, Slow Save more like.’ She gave a hacking laugh at her incredibly witty joke. ‘Have you got a pen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She reeled it off. ‘She’s a couple of gaps on Saturday if you’re sharp about it.’

  That threw me.

  ‘Gaps?’

  ‘Appointments – for the nails.’

  I mumbled a thank you and rang off. Gaps on Saturday? A second job for Carly Jowett?

  The phone rang out at the supermarket till I was sick of waiting. I looked the place up in the phone book and soon found the address for the store, the one in Northenden. Northenden starts just south of the Mersey on the way to Wythenshawe. In rush hour it’s horrendous as the road leads to the M60 and other motorways. I’d missed the worst of the traffic. I drove over the river, casting a glance at the weir under the flyover.

  In the store I approached a lad unloading a load of tinned goods on the first aisle and asked for Carly.

  ‘She’s on her break, I think,’ he said, ‘hang on.’ He wandered down the aisle a bit and shouted over to the woman on the checkout. ‘Carly on her break?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Carly – on her break?’

  ‘Yeah. Out back.’

  He turned
to me. ‘Big doors, car park, round the back.’

  I went out and followed the car park round to the loading doors at the back of the store. Here, a young girl, with blue hair extensions and nails painted like miniature seascapes cradled a cup of tea and sucked on a cigarette.

  ‘Carly?’

  She swivelled her head to look my way but moved nothing else. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Have a word?’

  ‘What about?’ Her brow creased.

  Sullen was the first word that sprung to mind.

  ‘I’m working at the Quay Mancunia Hotel.’

  She reared her head back, on the defensive.

  ‘Assessing management practice. Would you mind answering a few questions about your time there?’

  ‘Yes, I bleeding would. Bloody cheek of it.’

  Damn. I tried to spark her interest. ‘There have been complaints about a senior manager, I can’t go into details but your view would be extremely useful. All in complete confidence of course. And I can offer you a small payment for your time – interrupting your break.’

  ‘Yer doing what?’ She scowled, took another drag on her cigarette, flicked her eyes at the fiver I held out.

  ‘Investigating the management. There have been some complaints to the union.’

  ‘Not surprised.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Dictators,’ she said. ‘Treat you like a kid or summat.’

  I nodded as though this had been exactly what I’d been hearing. She took the money, pocketed it.

  ‘Who was your manager?’

  ‘Lucy Barker. Right snob she was. You know what she says. ‘A smile doesn’t cost anything, Carly’, expects you to grin all day like a bleeding hyena. And she’s always picking on you, personal stuff, not about your work. What colour your tights are and how you’ve done yer hair.’

  I was pretty sure Carly’s hair hadn’t been blue braids during her stint on Quay Mancunia reception.

  ‘Worse than school.’ She had a drink.

  I nodded energetically. ‘She wasn’t very popular then?’

  ‘Not with me she weren’t.’ She drew hard on her cigarette and held her breath while the nicotine worked its magic. ‘Mind you,’ she blew a stream of smoke out, ‘I reckon she were a bit demented. She’d been engaged to this bloke, he’d been killed in a car crash and she’s always on about it. She was in the car with him, he died in her arms. Perfect couple they were. I’m not being tight but I got sick of hearing about him. Like, get over it will you.’