by S W Kane
‘I do try,’ said Mole, appearing from the bathroom. ‘Oh, you were talking to the cat.’
‘Don’t make me laugh, it hurts.’
‘Here you go.’ Mole placed a glass of water and the painkillers next to her coffee.
‘I remembered something last night.’ She paused to swallow a tablet. ‘When I left Marsh House yesterday with the drawings, I almost bumped into a bloke crossing the street. It was that bastard from the pub, Lloyd. I knew he looked familiar.’
‘Hope I never run into that fucker,’ said Mole. ‘He’ll get more than a broken tooth if I do.’
‘He must’ve followed me to Raymond’s. God, I was stupid.’ She hadn’t really thought about why Calder had turned up at the bone jar, as Raymond called it, when he did. At the time, she’d just been relieved that he had. ‘He’s got to be the Creeper, don’t you think? Lloyd, I mean?’
‘Ask your detective. Talking of which, what time do you have to go and make your statement?’
‘Twelve. Then I thought I’d go and see Harry, tell him . . .’ She didn’t quite know what she’d tell him. That she’d looked Ed’s killer in the eye and watched him fall to his death, and that she’d done nothing to help him? She felt deeply conflicted: on the one hand she was glad Calder was gone, that she’d never have to see his face again; on the other, he’d never have to face up to what he’d done. A small part of her felt that they’d given him the easy way out, but there was no going back now. Bloody hell, she still hadn’t called Bonaro! God knows what reception she’d get from him after not turning up at work yesterday with the drawings from Helen Linehan.
‘Look, call your boss, get it out of the way,’ said Mole, as if reading her thoughts. ‘He’ll be cool once you’ve explained, I’m sure.’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’ She picked up the phone and took it into the bedroom, closing the door behind her, and dialled Bonaro’s number. When he answered, she took a deep breath. ‘Richard, I’m sorry about yesterday, I can explain . . .’ She carefully took him through the events of the last few days and felt satisfied that he was suitably horrified. If anything, he was simply angry that she hadn’t called to let him know she was all right.
‘Everything okay?’ asked Mole when she went back to the bar.
‘Yeah, I’m forgiven, but his trip’s been brought forward. He’s going in two weeks.’ How was she going to deal with all that in the next two weeks? Bonaro had arranged a meeting with the trustees of RADE in Wimbledon for later that week, which couldn’t be rescheduled, and had also suggested they spend a few afternoons going through the finances and any other things that she needed to know before he went. It was the last thing she felt like doing.
‘It might help, you know,’ said Mole. ‘Keep your mind off things.’
‘You mean like the funeral.’
‘Well, yeah. Come here,’ said Mole, wrapping his arms around her. ‘We’ll give the old bugger a good send-off, I promise.’ He gave her a gentle hug, and it felt good. ‘Hey, you seen the time? It’s almost eleven.’
‘Christ, I’d better get ready,’ she said, slipping off the barstool. ‘I’m going to have a quick shower.’
‘Let me know if you need any help with anything. You know, with the shoulder and that.’ Mole winked.
‘Thanks, but I think I can manage.’ She headed to the bathroom and stood for ten minutes under the hot water in a trance, letting it run down her face, warming her shoulders, as the painkillers kicked in. A sharp knock on the door brought her back to reality, and it opened a crack, Mole’s arm appearing with her ringing phone in his hand, an old Nokia she’d found in a drawer. He really was on his best behaviour.
‘Answer it, will you?’ she called, turning off the water and wrapping a towel round her. She wiped the mirror with the back of her hand, and through the steam could make out the bruising on her face. Her leg throbbed from the hot shower – where she’d cut it as Calder dragged her along – yet despite the heat of the small room, she shivered, goosebumps covering her arms.
She opened the bathroom door, releasing a cloud of steam into the pub. As soon as she saw Mole’s face, she knew something was wrong.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘It’s Harry. He’s had a stroke. He’s been taken to hospital.’
‘Fuck,’ she mumbled. ‘Who was it on the phone?’
‘Your good-looking copper bloke.’
‘Who said he was good-looking?’ She could feel herself beginning to blush. ‘Certainly wasn’t me.’
‘You didn’t need to. Not that I care, of course.’ He smiled.
‘No, course not. Me neither. Feel like I don’t care about very much at the moment.’
‘Oh, Cons, come here.’ Mole went over and put his arms round her. ‘And I do care, really. Just keeping you on your toes, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, well, that makes two of us.’ She kissed him on the cheek and started towards the bedroom, pausing by the door. ‘I might need some help. Getting dressed. You know, with the shoulder and that.’
‘What, really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘Well, this is a first,’ said Mole, walking towards her. ‘Being asked to help a girl into her clothes.’
CHAPTER 53
Ruthie Abbott would have made a bloody good nurse had she not encountered Ena Massey. Many of the attributes that led Kirby to this conclusion – attention to detail, meticulous notes and a strong moral sense of duty – had probably also helped seal her fate. Had she been less meticulous, less attentive and less concerned, Ruthie Abbott might have lived to see her son grow up. Unfortunately, the diary was like an unexploded bomb that Ena Massey had made sure never went off. It wasn’t just factual evidence. Ruthie had carefully documented her observations on Ena’s working methods and on Deep Sleep Therapy and her instinct that it was intrinsically wrong: worse than wrong, inherently dangerous. No wonder Ena had taken the diary and kept it safe. Why she hadn’t missed it when Karen took it in 1978 was a mystery. Unless, by then, Ena had simply moved on and forgotten about the entire thing – it wouldn’t have surprised Kirby if she had.
He locked the diary in his desk and headed out to the car, where he texted Livia to say he was on his way. Now he knew that Ena Massey had deliberately killed Ruthie Abbott, he had no reason to think that she hadn’t done the same to Sarah Carswell but with an overdose of barbiturates. Whether or not Ena knew she’d been seen killing Ruthie by Raymond, Kirby didn’t know. It seemed unlikely, given that she’d made no attempt to kill him; then again, perhaps she hadn’t needed to. Who would have believed someone like Raymond? It would have been his word against hers.
Kirby pondered all this as he drove to Ealing, desperately trying to push aside thoughts of what Livia might tell him when he arrived. Of everything that had happened – Calder seducing Charles Palmer, luring Ena to Blackwater via the old folly, murdering Ed Blake because he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time – the one thing that still bugged him was the Creeper. He’d thought it was Calder’s errant son, Lloyd, but this was looking increasingly unlikely, as his alibis for the specific occasions for which Raymond and Connie could pinpoint either an intrusion or a sighting were watertight.
Kirby swung into his mother’s drive and switched off the engine, sitting for a moment. What possible reason could Patrick Calder have had for snooping around Raymond and Connie’s houses? It made no sense; he hadn’t even known Connie until he met her at Marsh House – or, at least, as far as they knew.
He got out of the car and locked up, unable to put off his conversation with Livia any longer. He’d been desperate to know what was wrong with her, and yet now he was about to find out, he suddenly didn’t want to.
He rang the bell, and as he waited for her to answer his phoned pinged. It was a text from Anderson: Harry Joyce popped his clogs. It was hardly a surprise, but nevertheless it felt as though Ena had claimed another victim.
He heard his mother unlocking the door and put his phone away.
He had to repeat the same ritual as on the weekend – taking his shoes off and leaving them by the door, Livia watching from a distance – only instead of being led into the kitchen, his mother steered him into the living room, where she offered him a drink and asked him to sit down.
‘What’s this about, Mum?’ he asked, thinking she looked nervous.
His mother sat stiffly on the edge of the sofa, a wine glass clasped in her hands. ‘There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘Your nonna, it was me – I killed her.’
Kirby sat stunned, trying to comprehend what his mother had just said to him, a brief memory of seeing her hunched over his grandmother’s – his nonna’s – bed just before she died, flickered across his memory. Before he could summon up any form of response, Livia continued.
‘She was dying, Lew – a terrible, terrible death. I couldn’t let her go like that, I just couldn’t. You saw me that day, I know you did. You just didn’t know what you’d seen. And now . . .’ She paused. ‘Now it’s my turn.’
‘What do you mean? I don’t understand . . . Nonna died in her sleep. The doctor said so.’ He searched his mother’s face for some kind of affirmation that this had been the case, and could see none.
‘It’s not true. She didn’t die in her sleep,’ said Livia. ‘And it’s not true because it would have been impossible.’
What was she talking about – how could dying in your sleep be impossible? It occurred to Kirby that she was losing her mind, that whatever was wrong with her was affecting her mental capacity. That she’d lost her grip on reality. ‘Mum, you don’t know what you’re saying.’ He heard the lack of conviction in his own voice, the image of his mother standing in the doorway of his grandmother’s bedroom and her words – It’s over, she’s finally asleep – refusing to fade. ‘What do you mean, now it’s my turn?’
‘It means I’m dying, Lew, of the same disease. A disease that means you can’t sleep. There’s no cure, and – oh God, this is the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to say . . .’
‘More difficult than telling me you killed your own mother? That would be pretty hard to top,’ said Kirby, immediately regretting it.
Livia looked at him with such pain in her eyes that he suddenly realised that she wasn’t going mad at all. This was the truth, and what she was about to say was going to be ten times worse. Then it hit him. ‘No, Mum, please don’t tell me—’
Livia nodded slowly, her words barely audible. ‘It’s genetic, so there’s a fifty-fifty chance that you have it too. I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, as the tears rolled down her face.
CHAPTER 54
Kirby slipped into the church just as the service was about to begin. It was packed, so he sat at the back, glad not to be noticed. It had been just under a week since Livia had given him the news, although in truth it had felt like a lifetime. Words from their conversation refused to stop floating around in his head: dying, fatal, incurable, insomnia, hereditary. None of it joined up – just random words looking for somewhere to go. He still hadn’t spoken to Isabel about it; he didn’t know where to begin and had stayed at work late every night. When he got back to the boat in the early hours of the morning, he couldn’t sleep – hardly surprising, given what he’d been told.
The congregation began to rise, and he caught sight of Connie by the aisle near the front; her trademark black clothes now pathetically appropriate. His eyes wandered up the aisle and settled on the two coffins that sat side by side at the front of the church, Harry Joyce’s and Edward Blake’s, a simple white wreath on each. Soon he’d be doing this again, only then it would be his mother. He bit his lip to focus on the present, and thought about Livia and the secret she’d carried with her for all those years. He wondered whether she’d ever spoken of it on the rare occasions that she went to confession. Kirby wasn’t religious, despite the Catholicism on his mother’s side of the family, and had never been to confession in his life. He couldn’t imagine confessing his sins to a priest and he wondered if that was how his mother had justified her silence over the years.
The congregation grew quiet as the vicar greeted the church from her lectern and indicated that they should sit. Kirby lowered himself on to the pew and closed his eyes as she spoke. Her voice drifted in and out of his consciousness, and he caught the odd word, but it was like trying to catch snowflakes: they were there for a second, then gone. A pause came in the service, followed by a new voice. Kirby opened his eyes and saw a tall, good-looking man in his early thirties standing before the crowd. He’d been seated next to Connie, and Kirby wondered whether they were an item. The man spoke fondly and eloquently about Blake, about his passion for exploring and his near-obsession for recording things; so much so that Kirby was transported from his own dark thoughts just for a few minutes. The man ended his eulogy by saying that no coffin, and no amount of earth, would ever contain the spirit that had been his friend, and that if anyone could find a way out, it would be Ed Blake, the best drainer in the business.
Kirby slipped out as someone got up to speak about Harry, and stood in the graveyard. He didn’t want to hear any more. Harry Joyce – not to mention Tom Ellis – had died a heartbroken, lonely old man, and it was something Kirby didn’t want to dwell on. Was that how he would die? He hoped not, although if he inherited the disease that his mother had – this Fatal Familial Insomnia, or FFI as she called it – that might be preferable. Looking out over the graveyard, he spotted Raymond Sweet on a bench and made his way over.
‘Mind if I sit down?’ Kirby asked.
Raymond shook his head.
They sat in silence for a few minutes.
‘This is where I come for the bring-and-buy,’ said Raymond. ‘There should have been one today but . . .’ He trailed off.
‘How have you managed all these years, alone in that place?’ asked Kirby.
‘I’m not alone,’ he replied. ‘I have my mother. And the ashes. What will happen to them?’
‘At the moment they’re being kept at the funeral director’s. Unless any of the families can be traced, which is unlikely, they’ll probably stay there for a while. They’re safe, though. You needn’t worry.’
Raymond took out a packet of mini Jaffa Cakes from his coat pocket. ‘Would you like one? I got them specially.’ He offered the packet to Kirby, who took one.
Kirby must have been a child when he last ate a Jaffa Cake, and the taste took him straight back to his parents’ garden in the summer: the greenhouse full of tomatoes and the odd cannabis plant; his father chasing him with the garden hose when it got too hot; and his mother’s homemade lemonade. Happy times, before they split up. Now he knew why: Livia had made his father promise never to tell Kirby that she’d euthanised her own mother, releasing her from the living hell of incurable insomnia. Not only that, but that she, too, had inherited the same disease, and that one day it would also claim her and possibly their son. The secret had been too much for Kirby’s father to bear, and he’d left.
‘I’m sorry about your mother and Gregory Boothe,’ he said. ‘You must miss them.’
‘Every day. Nurse Abbott was the only one who understood how I felt.’
And paid the price for it, thought Kirby. ‘Are you happy, Raymond?’
He smiled. ‘I’ll never have to see Mr Calder again, and the redevelopment is on hold. Another Jaffa Cake?’
Kirby shook his head. ‘No thanks.’ People began filing out of the church, and he saw Connie emerge with the man who’d given Blake’s eulogy, his arm around her shoulders.
‘Will there be a buffet?’ asked Raymond.
‘A buffet? I don’t know,’ said Kirby, standing up.
‘Only, Mrs Muir said there’s usually a buffet after a funeral. We didn’t have one when my mother died though.’
‘Thanks for the Jaffa Cake, Raymond. You take care now.’ Kirby left him on t
he bench and made his way down towards the crowd.
Connie was standing with a group of people who he guessed were from the urbex community, and they fell silent as he approached.
‘Connie.’ Kirby nodded. ‘How have you been?’
‘Oh, you know, okay.’ She managed a smile. ‘You?’
‘Yeah, fine. That was a great eulogy, by the way,’ he said to the man next to her. ‘They’re not easy.’
‘This is Mole,’ said Connie, introducing them. ‘Kirby’s the detective I told you about. The one I kept annoying.’
‘Got the bad guy in the end though, didn’t she?’ said Mole.
Kirby couldn’t tell if he was joking or having a go, so he ignored it. He didn’t have the energy to argue.
‘I’m just going to talk to Dan,’ said Mole, wandering off to join the rest of the crew, who’d drifted away while they’d been talking.
‘He doesn’t approve of you fraternising with coppers then,’ said Kirby.
‘Mole’s all right. He was just a bit annoyed, that’s all. Said I was doing your job for you.’
‘How’s the shoulder?’ he asked. ‘Getting better?’
‘Slowly. Swimming’s helping.’
‘Good. Raymond’s here,’ he said, turning to point over at the bench, but it was empty. He must have gone in search of the buffet.
‘Will you find his body? Calder’s?’ asked Connie. ‘I’ll sleep much better knowing he’s really dead.’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’
‘I can’t believe he was the Creeper, I mean—’ But she was cut off by Mole, who came jogging back over.
‘Hey, Cons, you need to hear this,’ said Mole, pointing excitedly. ‘That bloke over there, Jimmy Rae. He was the one Ed met. You know, the one he told me about, as I was getting on the plane to Poland, the one who knew who your sister was with when she had the accident.’
