Homicide in Herne Hill

by Alice Castle

  As they shuffled towards the exit, Ben listened with a patient smile to her paeans of praise for his performance, like a Shakespearian actor who acknowledges the audience’s enthusiasm while accepting that they can’t really hope to comprehend the depth of the performance they have just witnessed.

  ‘Do you know Wilf, in Year 1?’ Beth said eventually. ‘I’ve just met his mum; she seems really nice.’

  ‘Yeah, Wilf’s all right, for a kid,’ Ben allowed magnanimously, from the giddy heights of Year 6, the top of the school.

  ‘She took some great photos of you. At least, I’m hoping she did,’ said Beth, a germ of alarm suddenly growing. ‘Oh no! She’s still got my phone. And I’ve got hers.’

  ‘Well, ring her then,’ said Ben, as though speaking to a simpleton.

  Beth supposed she’d have to get used to the fact that Ben was at ease with technology that hadn’t even been a gleam in Steve Job’s owlish specs during her own childhood. These solutions would always leap to him before she could hope to get her thoughts in order. Or that’s what she told herself. It was plain disconcerting when one’s children started coming up with clever ideas. She fumbled out the Nokia phone, looking askance at its blocky buttons.

  ‘Cool,’ breathed Ben, taking it from her with the reverence of an Egyptologist examining a rare papyrus. ‘That’s so… old.’

  ‘Hm. Give it here, Ben, I’ve just got to—’ But before she’d even finished the sentence, Ben had tapped out her mobile phone number on Nina’s clunky keyboard and handed the phone back to her.

  It rang three, four times, then was picked up. ‘That you, Beth? Sorry, walked off with your phone, didn’t I? And we’re halfway home now. What do you want to do? Do you need it tonight, or shall we meet tomorrow, get a coffee?’

  Little did she know it, but Nina had said the magic words. Beth’s days tended to be punctuated with little pauses in lovely cafes over coffee (or tea, she wasn’t fussy), and with Katie away now for two solid weeks, she’d been wondering where her next hot beverage would be coming from. She thought quickly. She surely wouldn’t need her phone before the morning. Her mother would have forgotten that it was Ben’s play today so wouldn’t be calling, and she wasn’t due to see her boyfriend – that word again! – until the end of the week. And she did have a landline at home, though nowadays the only purpose it served was as a hotline to cold caller hell.

  ‘Great, let’s meet at the playground. It’ll have to be a quick one as it’s my last day at work tomorrow before the holidays. Got to leave everything tidy,’ said Beth, wrinkling her brow. As usual, the thought of work had her feeling a mixture of guilt and gratitude. Though the Wyatt’s job had done so much to ease her financial woes, she was apt to dump it right at the bottom of her list of priorities, which was ungrateful, not to mention a bit silly. What if someone noticed how little work she actually did, and sacked her? But all that was going to change, she decided. She was going to work her socks off next year. It was going to be one of her resolutions.

  ‘Okey doke,’ said Nina. ‘Got to go, Wilf’s eating me shopping, straight out the bag.’

  Beth realised she was smiling as she handed the Nokia back to Ben for him to switch off. Was she being disloyal to Jen, she wondered, feeling happiness again so soon? But her friend wouldn’t have begrudged her a smile. She couldn’t stay miserable forever; it wouldn’t make Jen any less dead. Life was a precarious and precious thing, as events kept showing her. She had to make the most of her time, grab what joy she could.

  It was, she realised, the reason why she’d finally decided it was time to make a go of things with DI Harry York. She felt the fizz of anticipation at the thought, something she hadn’t known since her earliest days with her late husband, James, Ben’s father. As she and Ben walked home under the coloured fairy lights in the Village, she felt her boy’s sense of excitement at Christmas approaching. And for the first time in years, Beth shared it.

  Chapter Two

  There was nothing like the frozen wastes of a junior school playground to buffet the life out of you, thought Beth the next morning. As usual, she and Ben had made it by the skin of their teeth, and unless Nina had got here incredibly early and bombed off again already, she was even later than they were. Ben ran in and normally that would have been that, she could have toddled off, but today she’d have to hang about if she wanted her phone back. She sighed.

  But wait a minute, there were loads of mums still left in the playground. Far more than usual at this hour. They were gathered in little knots, talking intently, the largest group around one of the Year 4 teachers. What was going on? Beth sidled over.

  ‘…and they just couldn’t wake her up. Poor little thing, she was only six months old,’ one of the mums was saying, her nose pink and her eyes suspiciously shiny. Was that down to the cold weather, or had something awful happened? Beth instinctively moved closer.

  ‘She was terrible at night, they said, always waking up and crying, so they were trying to train her, shutting her in the kitchen until morning.’

  Beth had heard of draconian sleep-training methods, but this was going a bit far, wasn’t it? But to her surprise, there was a murmur of assent from the other mums. ‘It’s the only way, break the pattern,’ said one earnest woman, who Beth had always quite liked before.

  ‘Then the kids bombed downstairs in the morning, and there she was, poor little thing, stone dead on the kitchen floor,’ said the first woman.

  Beth couldn’t help herself, she gasped. The woman turned to her. ‘Oh, did you know Roxie, then?’

  ‘Roxie?’ said Beth, mentally scanning a roster of tiny brothers and sisters of Ben’s classmates.

  ‘Yes, Roxie, Pat and Sam’s dachshund. She was such a gorgeous little puppy. They can only think that she might have eaten something while they were out in the park. She was such a one for munching down anything she found – you know, balls, plastic cups…’

  A dog! Beth took a relieved breath. Ok, it wasn’t great that someone’s pet had died, but still, she couldn’t help feeling, somehow, that it had been a close call. ‘Poor little thing,’ Beth murmured hastily, joining in with the others, shaking her head. There was a collective peeking at watches and tutting at the time, and people started melting away.

  Soon, Beth was the last mum standing in the playground, and not enjoying the biting wind that swept across the deserted climbing frame and whacked straight into her. No sign of Nina. She got out the old Nokia, which was weighing down her bag, and poked at the keys, trying to get the thing to turn on.

  Just as she was giving up hope, she saw Nina bustling up the street, Wilf running ahead, book bag waving frantically in the air. In Year 1, you didn’t get much of a telling off for being late, Beth remembered fondly. The teachers tended to err on the side of cuddliness. It was in Year 2 that a more draconian regime kicked in.

  Nina puffed up to the gate, clutching her side. Her hugely padded white coat made her look a little like a snowball. ‘Sorry, sorry. It’s colder than a witch’s bits, innit?’ she puffed.

  ‘Erm, yes. No problem,’ said Beth, with the hearty relief that came from not being stood up, after all, added to the prospect of retrieving her phone. Though she wasn’t as wedded to it as half the people she knew, she’d still feel better once she had her little window into the world safely back in her bag. ‘Where shall we have coffee?’

  This was a crucial question in Dulwich. You could tell a lot about a person from the place they chose to sip their lattes. Beth studied Nina as the other woman pursed her lips and went through the options. Though only an inch or two taller than Beth – and that in itself was a pleasant novelty; most people tended to tower above her, whether they wanted to or not – Nina seemed quite a lot wider. That shouldn’t be comforting, but in the current fat-shaming culture, Beth didn’t try to deny that it gave her a tiny glow. If she never had much of the high ground, height-wise, she could at least reclaim some points thanks to her naturally slender, some would say weedy, physique. />
  Perhaps there would come a time when she had to spend hours in the gym to ward the flab off, but at the moment, running around after Ben and her job at Wyatt’s, plus her perennially high levels of anxiety, seemed to whittle away the pounds. They had quite a healthy diet, she supposed smugly, firmly shutting her mind’s eye to the chocolate stash she kept in the bottom drawer of her desk at the school. That was a secret between her and the cleaners. Besides, she knew Nina’s tastes ran to junk food, as she’d seen her bursting bags of Fanta and oven chips at the Nativity.

  ‘There’s a new place that’s just opened up, where the Post Office used to be. Fancy trying it?’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Beth in relief. Nina had passed the first test. In many ways, it was a tragedy that one of the very few useful shops in the Village had closed down. It had been such a busy Post Office, too. Before Christmas, there were always queues snaking out of the door as far as the florists, as people patiently waited to send gifts to far-flung loved ones. Then, in the New Year, they’d all queue again to send their own unwanted swag back to Boden, Brora, and beyond. Now they’d have to schlepp as far as Lordship Lane or Norwood. But at least it looked as though the place wasn’t going to be replaced by yet another chichi cushion emporium. Beth loved cushions, it was practically mandatory if you lived hereabouts, but at this point in her life she didn’t possess a single chair that was unadorned. She refused to get to the stage some people seemed to have reached, of buying chairs just to put fresh cushions on. There wasn’t room in her tiny house. And a new coffee shop was always a thrill.

  It was chilly as they hurried through the grey December streets. From the outside, the little Post Office had been transformed. It was now a heavenly shiny turquoise, with a big neon sign – possibly a little funky for Dulwich – announcing the name, Puccini’s. Beth rather liked it. The classical nod would no doubt appeal to opera aficionados, or those who aspired to know something about that rarefied world and had at least heard of the composer. It also gave a sense of multiple cappuccinos, which Beth, and most other residents of the borough, would firmly agree was a good thing.

  The door opened with the familiar jangle of the bell, which had been such a nuisance when the place had been the Post Office and people had trooped in so regularly that the sound gave you tinnitus. Now it was a rather pleasing retro touch. There were about six tables crammed into the small space, but that again was very Dulwich. Both Romeo Jones, the miniscule deli, and Jane’s, the much larger bakery café, were as crowded as an auction house’s back rooms. Here, the walls were a slightly deeper shade of turquoise, and the art on the walls was colourful and not taxing – Matisse’s snail, Patrick Caulfield’s pottery, Andy Warhol’s flowers. The tables and chairs were lacquered in mismatched corals, blues and yellows, and the whole thing was rather lovely. Crucially, it appeared to be pulling off the neat trick of appealing to Dulwich mummies, their nannies and au pairs, and the kids, too.

  Both Nina and Beth turned to raise their eyebrows and nod approvingly. ‘I’ll get the coffees, grab a table,’ said Nina. It sounded as though she’d handed Beth the best part of the bargain, but as usual hunting a space was no easy feat. As she stepped forward, Belinda MacKenzie, sitting in the centre of the room with five of her best pals around her, called over loudly.

  ‘Beth! On your own again? Come and join us. Here, shuffle up,’ she barked at the friends, who all obediently scraped their chairs in different directions.

  ‘Oh, thanks, Belinda, but I’m with…’ Beth said, gesturing at Nina who was at the till, apparently deep in discussion about their coffees.

  Belinda’s head snapped over, took in Nina in her vast white coat, and immediately drawled, ‘ohh!’ With a rapid gesture to her cohort, she made it clear that plans had changed and they awkwardly closed ranks. Belinda had been willing to allow Beth into the favoured circle, but Nina was a step too far. There was a pause, then Belinda carried on talking as though nothing had happened, and the others went back to contemplating her vast handbag – today, a Marc Jacobs number bristling with studs and tassels, splayed on the table as though the high priestess was about to examine its entrails.

  Beth sidled past them all with many a sorry and excuse me, and finally made it to the only unoccupied table, right in the corner, then sat down in relief. The chair was a lot softer than it looked, thanks to a cushion – of course – which looked as though it had come straight from the Village’s fanciest emporium. As Beth leaned to one side to examine this gorgeous confection of turquoise shot silk, admiring its multiplicity of tassels and trims, she realised that this would be a good control experiment. If these cushions lasted more than a month before starting to look shabby, with all the wear that they were destined to get, then maybe they weren’t such a batty purchase at £80 a pop and she might finally be able to upgrade some of her own boy-proof soft furnishings.

  Just then, Nina arrived with two outsize earthenware mugs, cheerily glazed in coral pink and purple. The waiter brought up the rear with a plate bearing two pain au chocolats, each with a generous hoar frost of icing sugar.

  ‘Yum,’ said Beth, her eyes as big as saucers and her vocabulary suddenly shrunken to Ben proportions.

  ‘I know, tuck in,’ said Nina with a grin, picking up hers and sinking her teeth into it with a roll of her eyes. ‘Better than sex.’

  Beth, who for many years would definitely have agreed with this statement but had recently been shown the error of her ways, felt her cheeks flame and tore off a corner of the pastry, bowing her head over the plate.

  ‘Aha! I see someone’s getting some. Nah, don’t look like that. Good for you, girl. ’S’all I’m saying,’ said Nina, through a thick mouthful. ‘That explains the number of missed calls you got last night. Phone was going like the clappers. I didn’t bother to switch it off. Don’t worry, it was all No Caller ID, so your secret lover is still secret,’ she said with a wink, handing over the phone.

  Beth, through her mortification, was much struck. She’d never been able to wink in that casually emphatic way. When once she’d been challenged to do it by Ben, she’d had to work up to it slowly, finally managing a sort of facial convulsion that moved all her features at the same time, not just one eye. She’d thought at the time that it was a male thing, but Nina’s seamless usage had disproved this. Maybe it was practice.

  But she knew that she was only dwelling on that wink to distance herself from the chaotic emotions aroused by Nina’s oh-so-accurate guess. She was sorry that she’d missed Harry last night. He’d be worried, she knew. He had good reason to believe that she got herself into terrible trouble when he wasn’t keeping an eye on her. She sneaked a quick look at the screen and saw four missed calls and a couple of texts. Part of her wanted to listen to her voicemails right away and luxuriate in the texts like a teenager whose crush has finally revealed his devotion. But she couldn’t. She put the phone away firmly in her bag and applied herself to the coffee instead. Mm. Delicious.

  ‘This place is really going to give Jane’s a run for its money,’ she smiled at Nina.

  ‘I know, right? They’ll have to up their game. Serve the odd drink above room temperature for a change.’

  ‘Even get some non-wobbly tables,’ agreed Beth. The two women were now skirting round, getting each other’s measure, assessing whether a friendship could be born from their chance meeting at the Nativity. As far as Beth was concerned, she was ready and willing. Nina seemed fun and, best of all, she was irreverent. The way she’d semi-barged past Belinda’s chair to get to their table told her a lot about the woman’s view of Dulwich society and her place in it. Belinda, as ever, had been sitting with her chair pushed out from the table, just a little bit further than everyone else’s. This was partly to dominate the space but also, Beth sometimes thought, because she wore such super-skinny white jeans that she couldn’t actually bend her enviably long legs. She’d also been ostentatiously comforting one of her little gang, who seemed to be sniffling into a tissue.

  ‘S
o, what’s your story?’ said Nina, breaking into her train of thought. She’d apparently tired of polite skirmishes and wanted to get down to brass tacks.

  ‘Story?’ said Beth innocently, looking into Nina’s round face. Once her hood was down, the woman’s flyaway, red-gold hair stuck up softly in all directions, a bit like the halo of curls sported by one of Raphael’s renaissance putti. Her expression, though, was as far from angelic as you could get; knowing, cheeky, and full of irrepressible curiosity. Large gold hoops dangled from her ears and, under her white puffy coat, Beth could see the collar of a multi-coloured fluffy sweater which must have been rather hot in the steamy café. The windows had already misted up and Beth was feeling uncomfortable in her own coat. She shrugged it off onto her seat back, like a butterfly shedding its cocoon, revealing her less than thrilling work outfit which, as usual, consisted of jeans and a jumper. She loved Wyatt’s dearly, but she’d never got her head around the dress code the other women all seemed to adhere to, featuring little frocks from the posher high street shops. Beth really considered it unnecessary to lash out a hundred pounds for a silk dress from Jigsaw in order to sit down on her own all day surrounded by ancient books.

  ‘You know. Here you are, kid in the primary, little bit of a job. No husband, hence the keen boyf. Or is there a husband and you’re just playing fast and loose?’

  Beth gave Nina a sharp glance. She was usually the one asking questions, and they tended to be a lot more subtle than this barrage. She definitely wasn’t loving being on the receiving end. There was only one thing for it. Turn the tables. She took a breath and plunged in.

  ‘So, you haven’t lived here long, have you? I haven’t seen you around much, before this term started, anyway?’

  Nina smiled. ‘Sorry, I can be a bit full on. My mum’s always telling me. I’ll lay off. Yeah, haven’t been here long, we live down Herne Hill. Not quite so posh as round here.’