Letting out the Worms: Guilty or not? If not then the alternative is terrifying (Kitty Thomas Book 1)

by Sue Nicholls

  ‘I charge ten pounds an hour,’ Anwen said, appraising the room and contemplating the mammoth task ahead. She groped for words that would not offend this well-meaning man. ‘How many hours do you think you’ll need me?’

  Maurice chortled. ‘It’s a mess, isn’t it?’

  She gave him a bent grin, and he said, ‘I was thinking, if you could spare one of your valuable weekends, you could come for a whole day or even two, to get it straight.’ He pointed out of the window at his progress in the border. ‘I’d like to get the garden finished, so I’d be pleased to leave you in here doing whatever you think. My son has a high opinion of your skills, and that’s good enough for me. What do you say?’ He stuck out a dirty hand, and she took it.

  ‘I can start this weekend if you like.’

  ‘That would be great, Anwen.’

  ‘Once it’s done, I’m available to come once a week, same as I do for Kitty.’

  ‘That would be perfect. Thank you.’

  It was ten past four by the time Anwen stepped back onto the pavement outside Maurice’s gate. The spring sunshine sent her long shadow humping over hedges and up walls as she trotted past a small block of flats under construction on the opposite side of the road. The building’s unfinished walls had gaping holes where windows were yet to be fitted and the whole structure was clad in a crisscross of scaffolding. Anwen slid by, avoiding the eyes of builders in jeans and scuffed orange hats. A piercing wolf whistle made her regret lopping so much off her school skirt, and she increased her pace, longing to be out of sight. When a man’s voice shouted, ‘Hey,’ and steps clumped towards her from behind, she broke into a run.

  The footsteps stopped and the voice called, ‘Hey, Anwen.’

  At the sound of her name, Anwen halted and turned round, her heart pumping - partly from the effort of running and partly in fear. A young and gorgeous man in a hard hat and dusty jeans and a work shirt stood on the pavement a few yards away. His arms dropped to his sides and he walked towards her. ‘It is Anwen, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘I thought so. You probably don’t recognise me with my hat on.’ He pulled the helmet from his blond head, leaving a red line on his forehead. ‘It’s me, Josh, we met at Paul’s engagement party.’

  Anwen’s face flamed. ‘Oh, yes.’ She was dumbstruck by this grown man, muscular and vital, talking to her as an equal.

  ‘I’m sorry about them.’ Josh jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, and Anwen dared to look at the flats. She snatched her eyes away at the sight of half a dozen exuberant builders leaning on the rails, shouting, ’Go for it, Josh,’ and ‘All right darlin’?’

  Josh spun round and yelled, ‘Oy. Get back to work. We’ve got to get this topped off by May, remember.’ He turned back, and the men, still grinning, dispersed to their tasks.

  ‘They don’t mean anything,’ he said, and when he saw her agitation, asked, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Fine.’ She felt like a kid of three, unable to form sentences.

  ‘That’s good then.’ Josh nodded. ‘What are you doing down here? It’s not on your way home from school, is it?’

  ‘It’s not far out of my way. I came to see Maurice about doing cleaning for him.’

  ‘Dad?’

  She had forgotten, or had not taken in, that Maurice was Josh’s father. ‘Yeah, sorry, your dad.’

  Josh punched the air. ‘Yes! About time. He lives in a pigsty, doesn’t he?’

  Anwen played with her hair, tucking it behind one ear, and kept her opinion to herself.

  Josh took a step back towards the building site. ‘I should…’ he jerked his head at the construction site.

  ‘Yes. OK.’

  ‘I expect I’ll see you again if you’re working for Dad.’ Josh turned away, clamping on his helmet amid more whoops and shouts from above.

  Anwen scuttled home, with her thoughts occupied by Josh’s muscular arms and broad shoulders.

  37 ANWEN

  In Maurice’s house, the windows were wide open to the spring sunshine, and the jubilant calls of nesting birds filtered inside to Anwen as she scrubbed mildew from the discoloured frames. As she worked, she calculated her earnings. By Monday, she would have toiled on this dusty place for fifteen hours. That worked out at one hundred and fifty pounds, and her imagined ownership of a smart phone would soon be a reality.

  In the back garden, Maurice was stooping over a flower border, dragging festoons of foliage into a tattered, blue Ikea bag. During the morning, Anwen had kept him supplied with whatever he needed. A drink of tea at eleven a.m. with a small plate of biscuits, which he gobbled down; a glass of water an hour later followed by a visit to the sweet-smelling loo. Now that he was back on task among the weeds, she estimated she had at least a half hour before he appeared to disturb her.

  With a grubby cloth in her hand, she crept to the kitchen and took a moment to admire her work and give herself top marks for the room’s pristine state and significantly fresher aroma. She had scrubbed the crusted work tops and taken a stiff brush to the vinyl flooring so that now, the only marks on it were the ochre coloured rectangles and triangles of its faded pattern. One peep in the oven had been enough to tell that it would be half a day’s work on its own, so she had wiped the outside and the top and decided that was enough for the moment.

  Now, Anwen the cleaner rotated her duster over the work surface again, while Anwen the investigative journalist pulled open cupboards and poked in drawers. When she pulled at the handle of a drawer under the side window, something inside snagged on the top, preventing it from opening. She pressed down the jumble of papers inside. Bingo! With a furtive look at Maurice’s stooped figure she collected up a handful of notebooks and calendars. Her heart was in overdrive, and in her clumsy haste to tame the unwieldy pile she let it slip from her grip and onto the floor with a flap and a flutter. Pads and scraps of paper glided across the vinyl and some disappeared under the cooker. In horror, she clawed everything together and stood up, panting, to check on Maurice. He was not at his post. In panic, she scanned the garden and craned her neck to check in the corners, but he had vanished. With fumbling fingers, she dropped the bundle back and slammed the drawer shut, just as his beaming face loomed in the glass of the back door and it opened.

  ‘How are you getting on?’

  His fingers left their grimy imprint on the door and Anwen hid her frustration, saying, ‘Fine. Do you have any polish?’

  ‘Polish, no. I didn’t think of that.’ His face brightened, and he pointed to the drawer against which, Anwen was now pressed. ‘Find a notebook in there and list everything you need. I’ll pick it up from Watco before you come next time.’

  ‘OK.’ She did not move. ‘Can I get you another tea?’

  Maurice shook his head. ‘Best get on. I’m making excellent progress.’

  Still stuck to the drawer, she stretched her neck to view the flowerbed. ‘It’s so much better. Josh won’t recognise the place next time he comes.’

  ‘Josh?’ Maurice’s face crumpled. ‘I haven’t seen him for a while.’

  ‘I expect he’s busy.’ Anwen wished she had not mentioned her handsome builder, but by way of explanation told Maurice, ‘He’s working on a block of flats round the corner.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’ Maurice asked, stretching his neck towards her.

  ‘Only the once.’ She swallowed. Maurice was a sad figure, standing there in the doorway.

  He sighed, and she experienced a flash of sympathy for this pathetic old man. Josh didn’t realise how lucky he was to have a father who cared about him - longed for his visit - for love, not gain. Next time she saw Josh she would encourage him to call on Maurice to see the improvements to the house and garden.

  She experienced a moment of disbelief. In a matter of weeks, she had found herself among many people who cared about her, liked her, wanted to help her. The thought made her eyes fill with the heat of grateful tears. It was good to be giving something i
n return: this cleaning for Maurice and, more significantly, aiding Kitty in her investigations. She smiled at Maurice and said, ‘I’ll get on then,’ and Maurice toddled obediently off, whistling.

  When she was sure he was once more engrossed in his unruly border, Anwen returned to her scrutiny of the drawer, glad of the excuse she now had. She pulled a ruled notebook from under the heap of papers and put it on the table. Next, she set to work riffling through the rest of the drawer’s contents. There were ancient, blurred bills going back years, greasy shopping lists jotted onto scraps of paper, and calendars - many. She screwed up her eyes, trying to picture Kitty’s spreadsheet. Had Fee died in 1995, or 1996? Unsure, she gathered up all the calendars from 1992 to 1998 and wiggled them into her bag.

  By late afternoon, the house was a good deal cleaner. Pale colour had returned to the carpets and there was a lustre to the surfaces. When Maurice, at her behest, came to check on her work, he was delighted. ‘I don’t recognise that carpet,’ he said, standing at the entrance to the living room.

  ‘There’s still plenty to do. I’ll clean inside the oven tomorrow and give the bedrooms a good go.’ She stepped out of the door, already thinking of Josh with his strapping muscles, the heat radiating from his body and an aroma of concrete rising from his clothes. She loved the way he had ignored the other men’s jibes to talk to her, young as she was.

  She swapped the heavy bag containing the calendars onto her other shoulder and plodded along the pavement on aching feet, planning a steaming shower and comfy jimjams when she got home.

  When she neared the building site, she began to look out for Josh, and soon spotted a figure throwing a shovel into the back of a battered van. It was him. She quickened her pace, her feet suddenly light.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  Josh popped his head over the door. ‘Hello Anwen. We must stop meeting like this.’ He gave her a grin.

  She covered her embarrassment by scooping her hair behind one ear and saying, ‘I’ve been at your dad’s.’

  ‘I guessed you had.’ He slammed the doors shut. 'Can I give you a lift home?’

  In the van, the shovel and other tools rattled and clanged behind them, and Josh raised his voice to ask if she was planning to do anything with her friends tomorrow, Sunday.

  She bellowed back that she was returning to Maurice’s. ‘You should come over and see. You won’t know it.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ he said.

  They sat in silence for a while and Anwen dredged through her brain for something to say. Finally, she came up with, ‘I’m seeing Kitty this evening.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes, I’m helping her with her investigation into her mother’s death.’

  They turned a corner and the tools in the back crashed to one side. After a lengthy silence, Josh asked, ‘What investigation’s that?’

  ‘Um, she’s trying to piece together the events that led up to the murder.’

  After another interval Josh said, ‘She told us she wanted to talk things through so we could put everything behind us. I didn’t know it was an investigation. Why’s she doing that?’

  Anwen faltered. ‘I think Max Rutherford has come out of jail. Kitty told me he’s still claiming he didn’t do it.’

  ‘What are you helping her with?’ Josh asked, and Anwen wriggled in her seat, heat travelling up her neck.

  ‘Oh, nothing much. Maybe sort out her papers and make tea.’

  When they pulled up at the house, Anwen jumped out with a quick, ‘Thanks,’ and slammed the door of the van, before Josh could ask anything more.

  38 KITTY

  Kitty stared at the calendars Anwen was holding out to her. ‘Anwen, I appreciate your interest, but you shouldn’t have taken these. You can’t go snooping in Maurice’s stuff.’

  Anwen’s shoulders drooped. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. It’s the period when your mum died and Twitch disappeared, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. It is.’ Kitty took the calendars and flicked through them, dying to compare them with her spreadsheet. ‘It may be useful, but if Maurice had caught you, you would have lost your job.’ She shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t have told you what I was working on.’

  ‘But you did,’ Anwen pleaded, ‘And now you have these, why don’t we see if you can add anything to your spreadsheet?’

  Kitty’s head snapped up. Now she was angry. Anwen, whom she had trusted to be alone in her flat, had poked in her papers. Her crossness made her sharp. ‘Enough! I don’t appreciate your snooping around in my things, either.’ She nodded at the door. ‘I’m sorry, but I’d like you to leave. I’m not sure I want you working for me.’ She fished out her purse and handed a tearful Anwen her money. ‘This covers the work you’ve done. I’ll be in touch if I need you again.’

  When Anwen had left, Kitty sat down at the dining room table and flicked through Maurice’s entries. There were not many; mainly appointments for himself or the children.

  She opened the up to date spreadsheet on her computer and added a column for Maurice’s calendar and worked through the dates. In most cases there was no entry on Maurice’s calendar to correspond with her mother’s diary, but on some occasions, she was able to marry them up, or add in a firm date. When she reached the day on which Twitch disappeared, Maurice had entered a single item: an asterisk.

  She looked across the row where the date was recorded on her spreadsheet. According to the court report, Paul had a hangover and did not go out at all. Fee’s diary said, ‘Maurice not available until evening.’ But in Maurice’s evidence, he swore he had been home all evening, so what did happen that day?

  She squeezed her sore eyes shut and combed her fingers through her hair, noting that it was getting too long.

  39 KITTY

  ‘What a cheek.’ Sam picked up a calendar and flicked through it, saying, ‘Dad throws nothing away. I’ve been trying for ages to get him to sort his stuff out.’

  He flicked through the pages and after some moments, said, ‘To be fair, if I’d found these, I would have smuggled them here, too. I suppose she was trying to help.’

  ‘Yeah, by snooping through my stuff and Maurice’s.’ Then it was Kitty’s turn to sigh and shake her head. ‘You’re right. She meant well. I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth and hinted at what we were doing.’

  ‘Don’t be too hard on her. She works well, doesn’t she?’

  With a tut, Kitty ran her eyes round the room. ‘Yes, she’s excellent. The flat’s never looked so smart.’

  ‘Neither has Dad’s house. And he enjoyed her company. She made him tea and looked after him. To be honest, I’m glad of that - I worry about him these days.’

  Kitty nodded her understanding. She too had noticed a deterioration in Maurice’s mental state. ‘OK.’ She allowed, ‘Let’s leave things be for now. I’ll tell her she can come back, and make sure I lock our work away on Fridays.’

  ‘And: We’ll have a strong word with her about trust,’ Sam said, picking up the calendars and tamping them into a neat stack. ‘I’ll put these back where they came from. Dad won’t have a clue they were ever missing. Some time, I might find them by ‘accident’ and ask about that asterisk.’

  He changed the subject. ‘Any news about the green stuff yet?’

  ‘Not yet. She said it would take over a fortnight.’ Kitty opened her laptop. ‘Let’s go over my mum’s movements for a while.’

  ‘OK. If you’re sure.’

  Kitty gave a nod and scrolled down the document to the dates when her mother and Max married in Mauritius.

  Fee’s diary was blank. By then she had resigned from her high-powered job. Both Millie and Twitch had died, and Fee was at home helping Nanny Gloria care for all of them. If she had another diary, Kitty could not find it.

  Paul had stopped recording his anger by that time, too. So, the only data they had, came from Kitty’s memories, the court transcript and Maurice’s calendar.

  ‘November 1996.’ Kitty murmured, ‘That’s when they
got married.’

  ‘How much do you remember?’ Sam asked.

  Reluctantly, Kitty forced herself to think back to that time. Max Rutherford had persuaded Nanny Gloria to collude in the surprise wedding, by sending Kitty to Mauritius as a treat for Fee. ‘I was excited,’ she said. ‘Max told Nanny Gloria and I to keep the wedding a secret. We bought a bridesmaid’s dress, and I had my hair done.’

  Kitty described the adventure of an aeroplane flight on her own, dropped by Nanny Gloria at Heathrow into the care of a steward. She had sat at the front of the plane, close to the little curtain behind which, staff prepared meals and drinks. On arrival at the airport, she was led by a kind steward into the care of another person, a lady this time. They waited in the airport's cool building until the lady handed Kitty over for a final time, to a uniformed man with a white smile and a shiny car.

  When she reached the part where Fee saw her for the first time, holding the sweaty stems of a posy of flowers, with her feet dancing in excitement, Kitty’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I trusted him, the bastard. He was planning to murder my mother, and I helped him.’

  When Sam reached to touch her arm, she stiffened and fixed her eyes on the screen. ‘Let’s get on with this, shall we?’

  ‘OK,’ Sam said, forcing a business-tone. He slid the pile of paper towards him. ‘The court details tell us that the police were already investigating your dad for the murder of my mum…’ He tailed off. ‘Are you sure we can do this? It’s mad. Did you hear what I just said?’

  ‘I did. It is unbelievable. But we’re the only ones who can do it. Who else would want to?’

  Sam nodded. ‘OK, so… They brought Paul back from Mauritius and questioned him.’ Sam flapped through the court transcript. ‘There’s barely anything here about the police in Mauritius.’

  Kitty grabbed the papers from Sam and scanned through each page. ‘You’re right. Nobody was in court from there. No police and no witnesses.’ She gripped Sam’s arm. ‘We have to go there. Talk to the police, and the staff in that restaurant.’