Dead Old

by Maureen Carter

  Inconclusive? Sounded like a cross between fudge and fuck-up. She was desperate to know more, dying for him to tell her what’d happen next. She was holding her breath, hoped her “Oh yeah?” sounded more laid back than she felt.

  She watched as he got into the car, placed his case on the back seat. Bastard. How could he do that to her? She dug her hands into her coat pockets, stamped a foot primarily against the cold. Next thing she knew, he was leaning across and opening the passenger door. “I’m going into the Nuffield. First thing.”

  Private, then. She didn’t blame him; probably do the same herself. She turned to face him. He looked just the same, sounded upbeat, but his hands were strangling the wheel. “Anything I can do, guv. Anything you need. You only have to ask.”

  He nodded and smiled. It was all he could manage; it was more than enough.

  27

  The Angel was one of those classy wine bars in the Mailbox designed to attract the city’s coolest customers. Must be fucking freezing, if you asked Bev. There was so much naked flesh on show, she’d spent the last thirty minutes counting goose bumps. Her bar stool in the far corner was an ideal vantage point. She swerved to avoid a bony elbow and a trail of stale smoke. Bridget Jones had a lot to answer for. From what Bev could see, the place was an upmarket Smithfield’s: a load of scantily clad singletons swigging Chardonnay and looking for Mr All-Right-On-The-Night-In-A-Piss-Poor-Light.

  Bev sank a last mouthful of Sauvignon. She wasn’t pissed, just pissed off. If this was Tom’s idea of a joke, ho bloody ho. The purpose of the meet was ostensibly professional; it felt like she was being stood up. She glanced at her watch yet again. Sod this for a game of solitaire. Time waits for no man. And neither did Morriss.

  “I’m so glad I caught you. I was sure you’d have gone.” She felt Tom’s hand on her arm. He managed a profuse apology even though he was out of breath. “I’m so sorry. Please. Let me get you another drink.”

  Fulsome though it was, it wasn’t an explanation.

  “Bitter lemon,” she said. “And I can’t stay much longer. I’ve got things to do.” Churlish, but she didn’t appreciate being kept hanging round. She was knackered, starving and had a seriously busy weekend ahead. A group was grabbing its Armani jackets and heading for the door. She slid off the stool. “I’ll see you over there.” The bar was no place to talk.

  She watched him closely as he waited to be served. She’d seen him cool, casual and concerned. She’d be hard put to define his current state. He kept looking over his shoulder, darting glances at the door. As he handed her the glass, she thought she noticed his hand shake slightly. She didn’t comment, just took a sip. The bitter lemon was exactly that; she pulled a face, regretted eschewing more grape.

  “Look, Bev, I honestly don’t make a habit –” he started.

  “Has anything come to mind?” If he’d been on time there’d be no need to grovel. That was the trouble with good-looking blokes; thought they could get away with murder.

  “Sorry –?” Confused? Clueless? She couldn’t tell from the voice and refused to meet his glance.

  “The youths. Near the park,” she said. “We’re particularly interested in the one with spiked hair. Dark.”

  The silence went on so long it forced her to make eye contact. Only she couldn’t. Tom Marlow was staring at his hands. He mumbled something but she must have misheard. “Say again.”

  “I saw him tonight.”

  “You did what?” She couldn’t believe it. Neither, it appeared, could the couple at the next table. She lowered her voice, leaned in a little, watching as he halved the large scotch in a single gulp.

  “I gave chase. It was so stupid.”

  Incredibly. Number One: the youth was almost certainly carrying. Number Two: it was a collar opportunity, cocked up. She was about to erupt again but something about his voice, the expression in his eyes stopped her. He was trying to hide it but the failed heroics had left him badly shaken.

  “I should have called the police. I know that now.”

  She nodded. There was no point rubbing it in.

  “He had a knife.” Marlow opened his coat gingerly. He’d staunched the flow of blood with a wadded-up handkerchief.

  “Jesus H,” Bev gasped. “What’s the fucker done?”

  Marlow attempted a weak smile. “I’m sure it looks worse than it is.”

  Bev reached for her keys. “I fucking hope you’re right.”

  An overworked, under-stress A and E doctor agreed. Tom Marlow was lucky. The wound wasn’t deep but it was close to the heart. His blood pressure was low; they’d keep him in overnight.

  Bev nodded. It was a vindication. She’d virtually had to force Tom to visit casualty. She’d done the driving while he filled in the details. Highgate was acting on them now. They just might get lucky. Tom Marlow had been in the back of a black cab when he spotted the youth getting off a 35 bus in town. The area of the chase was pretty well covered with CCTV and the tape from the bus was being biked back to the nick. Officers were on the street searching for a weapon, seeking witnesses. According to Tom, there’d been a number of people around though none, predictably, had intervened.

  She popped her head round the cubicle, relieved to see the colour back in his face. Even in this lighting he looked good. “I’m off,” she smiled. “Catch you later.”

  He lifted a hand in farewell, pain and delayed shock accounting for the obvious exhaustion. “Thanks for everything, Bev.” He looked down but she sensed he had something to say. “I’m really sorry. Maybe if I’d –”

  “No sense beating yourself up. He’s out there somewhere. He’ll cock up sooner or later. And when he does, we’ll get him.”

  She flashed him a bright smile, kept a dark thought to herself: Marlow was attacked because he’d recognised the youth. Did the assailant also know Marlow? Was it possible the scumbag had actually engineered the encounter? Was it, like the attack on her gran, a warning? Did it mean she was getting close? Or was she getting paranoid?

  It doesn’t come easy. Sleep, that is. Not when your thoughts are doing a Schumacher. She put a pan of milk on to boil; hot chocolate might encourage the zeds. She rubbed the back of her neck, tried to smooth out a few knots. They’d been so close to a collar tonight. Close but no cigar. If only Tom Marlow hadn’t tried to play the hero. He’d ended up as an extra in ER and the runaway now had the lead in a road movie. She slumped and sprawled, too wired to unwind, too knackered to make connections.

  She glanced round in need of diversion. She took a paper from her mum’s re-cycling pile on the dresser, wondered if she dared light a ciggie. Nah. It was too cold to keep the door open. She flicked through the pages, froze, flicked back. A familiar face stared out from page three. God knew when they’d snatched her pic but it had to be during the last force ten. The headline screamed:

  STREETWISE GANG TARGET COP’S GRAN

  The story bore even less relation to the reality. According to Evening News Crime Correspondent Matt Snow, West Midlands Police hunting a vicious gang of street thugs are confident of further arrests...

  She raced on, spotting two spelling errors in the next paragraph. Frigging hell. If Snowie couldn’t even get the names right… She went back over the story to see how he’d fared with the facts.

  Detective Sergeant Beverley Morris, whose grandmother Saddie is recovering from her ordeal, was hopeful that new evidence would lead police to the killer ‘within days’.

  Bev wiped a hand over her face. Fuck the facts, but what a scoop: a poop scoop. So exclusive was the report, Matt Snow had the copyright. She read it for a third time. Cunning sod. It was implication and suggestion. He hadn’t actually stated the police had new evidence and of course they were confident of an arrest. Eventually.

  She tore out the article, slipped it in her bag. It wasn’t just Snow’s lurid imagination bugging her, but she couldn’t put her finger on what else was wrong. She gave a wry smile. Maybe she’d ask ‘Saddie’.

  “Shit!
”

  Bev’s mad dash to the cooker was too slow. The bubbling milk had the edge. Had the hot ring, top of the stove and kitchen floor as well.

  Sadie was crying over more than a drop of spilt milk. The noise sounded like the mewling of a sick frightened animal. Bev heard it on her way to bed. She paused on the landing, cocked an ear. Her gran was sobbing her heart out and Bev’s was in bits. She dithered outside the bedroom door. Sadie would be mortified if Bev, or anyone come to that, witnessed her distress. Her gran’s generation regarded ‘letting it all hang out’ as something you did with washing.

  Bev closed her eyes, pictured Sadie, tear-stained cheeks, bewildered, confused. Diminished – that was the word. A shadow of her pre-attacked self. Bev bit down hard on her lip. Unbidden, an image of the yob with spiked hair flashed before her. The anger was physical; she felt the heat running through her veins. She’d be no use to Sadie feeling like this. Anyway, she was bone-tired. She walked away, heading for her room. Then made a detour.

  “Fancy a nightcap?” The Armagnacs were probably large enough to anaesthetise, let alone induce sleep. “Best not tell mum.”

  She forced a conspiratorial grin into the whisper, giving the old lady a few seconds to dry her tears. But Sadie didn’t bother. Maybe there were too many. Bev sat on the edge of the bed, took one of her gran’s hands between her own. The bones were brittle and trembling like twigs.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  Sadie kept her eyes down. Bev sneaked glances, waited for the right moment. The tears, the silence – it was so not Sadie. Some people could light up a room; her gran could light up a castle. She loved life, loved people, always had a good word to say. She’d had knocks before. Bert, her fireman husband, had died fighting a blaze at a block of flats. Bev glanced at the wedding photograph that never left her gran’s bedside table. In a certain light you could catch the outline of Sadie’s lips where she kissed his through the glass. Worse was when Sadie buried her only son, Bev’s dad. Even that hadn’t crushed her like this. She squeezed her gran’s hand, almost at a loss.

  “It’s OK to have a good cry, you know. No one thinks any of the less of you.”

  Sadie looked up. “I do, Bev.” She turned her head. “He’s made me feel weak and worthless. Like as if I don’t matter.”

  “Don’t let him, gran. He’s not worth it.” Easier said than done. Violence wasn’t about the scars you could see.

  “I’m frightened. Every minute of the day and night, I’m frightened.”

  “Anyone would be, gran. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Sadie shook her head. The clock ticked. A horny cat was on the prowl out back. A couple of times, Sadie opened her mouth to speak, finally got round to it on the third attempt. “Every time you go out the door, I wonder if you’re ever coming back.”

  Where did that come from? “Gran,” she soothed. “Gran…”

  “I never thought about it before. Em always did enough fussing for the both of us. But I’ve seen it now. People hurt each other. You’re out there on the firing line, Bev.”

  “Don’t go worrying about me, gran. I can take care of myself.”

  It was true. She had more self-defence courses under her belt than Bruce Lee. She embellished a few tales to try to reassure the old lady. Maybe it was the alcohol or the anecdotes, but it didn’t take long before Sadie nodded off. Bev brushed her gran’s forehead with her lips and slipped off the bed. She turned at the door. Sadie wasn’t asleep; she was looking straight at her.

  “I always thought you were making a mistake, Bev. But I see it now. You made the right choice.”

  Bev gave an uncertain smile. Maybe she’d overdone the Armagnac.

  “No getting married, no kids,” Sadie went on. “You’ve got your job. You can’t have it all. You’ve always said that.”

  Have I? Then the penny dropped. Saint Joseph’s Junior School. Double feature: sex and childbirth. She could see it now. She’d got home that afternoon swearing eternal celibacy and vowing never to bring up so much as a guinea pig.

  “I –” She broke off. No point putting Sadie straight this late in the day. The little-wife thing wasn’t based on the pressures of being a cop. Before this case, she’d never wanted kids or commitment, full stop. Now? She wasn’t so sure.

  She nodded, hoped the smile reached her eyes. “You said it, gran. Try and get some rest now, eh?”

  28

  “Here you go, Davy.” Bev placed a mug of chocolate topped with marshmallows on the metal table. She’d have added parasol, cocktail cherry and a couple of 99 flakes if she’d thought it would oil the wheels. She held out a hand. “I’m Sergeant Morriss. Bev.” She reinforced the gesture with a warm smile. Neither elicited a response of any kind. Suit yourself.

  Shame that, because this wasn’t a ‘he said, she said, who gives a fuck’ sort of interview. This mattered. Or it should. Not that Davy Roberts was aware – not by the look of him. He’d barely glanced at Bev. She was less interesting than the stainless steel toilet bowl and the almost certainly semen-stained mattress. The cells at Highgate were not five-star.

  A quick sip of Cadbury’s didn’t count as an indication of gratitude, but it was the youth’s only acknowledgement of her existence. Another slurp added to the nascent chocolate moustache. Bev restrained an urge to dab his top lip. It wouldn’t do much for his ego, which was clearly struggling as it was.

  “Gonna tell me about it, Davy?” Bev’s faded denims and bomber jacket said cool rather than cop, but maybe Davy wasn’t listening. His expression could have turned cream. But it didn’t reach the lad’s startled, and startlingly blue, eyes. She caught a flicker of something else there: vulnerability? Fear? She registered the same unwitting conflict in his body language. His legs, in baggy black combats, were sprawling-wide-boy but those skinny hunched shoulders were curled in on themselves. She mirrored his stance with her own legs, glanced round ostentatiously. “Nice place you got here.”

  He sniffed. Not something she’d recommend, given the competing odours. Floral disinfectant was no mask for urine, stale sweat and the ghosts of a thousand farts.

  She waited a while, taking covert glances at the lad, but the laid-back approach was going nowhere.

  “Why’re you doing this, Davy?” She didn’t mean biting his nails, not that there was much left to chew; all ten were down to the quick; a couple were bleeding. “You’ll go down big-time. Know that? When you come out, you’ll not need to nick pension books. You’ll have one of your own.” If you’re lucky.

  It was no bedtime story, though he’d closed his eyes. Bev bit her bottom lip. The silly little bugger was going to take the rap for something she was convinced he hadn’t done. She had no idea why, or who was behind it, but when it came to piling on the pressure she’d just been to the pressure shop.

  “Who’s bullying you this time, Davy?” She’d clocked the bruises when she’d sneaked a butcher’s at the lad last night. Butcher’s was right; skinny pale arms blotched the colour of liver. “What bastard’s scaring the shit out of you now?”

  A toilet flushed along the corridor. She waited. And waited. It wasn’t going to work.

  She itched to knock some sense into him, opted to hit where she sensed it hurt most. “’Course, they’ll probably let you out for Gert’s funeral.” So that’s what eyes snapping open looked like. Carry on, Beverley. Go for the closed mind now. “Poor old soul looked like death yesterday. Doubt she’ll last till the trial.”

  His eyes were pleading but the mouth was still clamped. Trouble was, she had no time for finesse. The minute he was formally charged, there’d be no more little chats like this. What was happening now wasn’t just off the record, it was off Bev’s own bat. And she had no intention of being caught out. She lowered and softened her voice, pulled the chair closer. “This isn’t a game any more, Davy. It’s big boys’ stuff.”

  Half a minute’s grace for him to take that in then, slowly, casually, she outlined the evidence they’d uncovered in h
is room: the handbags, the bloodstained clothing. She had a feeling it was news to him: bad news. “It couldn’t be more serious, Davy.”

  He opened his mouth, then swallowed hard, as if to stop words he’d later regret. But the urge to speak was there. She’d read the signs, seen them before. It was a question of finding the right button. She found a possibility in her bag, pushed the photograph across the table.

  For a heartbeat or two, she thought he was going to throw up. His body tensed, he darted wild glances round the cell walls, anywhere but on the bloody battered face of the murdered Sophia. Not that it mattered. The split-second glimpse was enough. He covered his eyes but the image was recorded forever. The brain could play it back any time. And would, if Bev’s experience was anything to go by. She felt a momentary pang of conscience. The picture show had been well out of order. Tough.

  “Gert doesn’t believe you did that, Davy. She reckons you’re a good lad.” She reached across, slipped the still back in her bag. “Poor old dear was crying her eyes out when I left. She’ll not cope on her own. I guess the Social’ll find her somewhere.”

  His face was wet but the tears weren’t enough. She had to get the lad to talk. She was up against the clock and fresh out of buttons. She re-ran the scene with Gert, desperate for a lead-in. There was only one avenue she hadn’t gone down. She frowned, walked it mentally again. Came across a thought that sparked an idea. Stay cool. It was too crucial to blow.

  “I’m wasting my time here. You’d best have this.” She chucked him another photo, a copy of the picture she’d borrowed from Gert. Davy and his gran linking arms; smiles wider than the old girl’s girth. “It’ll give you something to remember her by.”

  She gathered her bits, headed for the door. It was a throwaway line; she turned to see if he caught it. The lad had his head down, cradling the photograph in both hands.