Death of a Mermaid

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘That was different. She was in shock. He died at her feet.’ Andy swung his legs over the arm of the chair, a relaxed boyhood pose. Freddy guessed it hid that he was tied in knots. She gulped the drink, to quell a sob in her throat.

  ‘Funerals are for the living. It’s one day,’ Andy cajoled.

  ‘I’m lapsed.’ Freddy was raising obstacles for Andy to surmount. She wanted him to plead. For decades no member of her family had wanted her. She finished her drink and, clambering off the bed, looked in the fridge for another. The idea of staying was attractive. As Andy said, it was one day.

  ‘Another?’ She held up the remaining little bottle of Scotch.

  ‘Oh, go on. Kirsty’s not here to count.’ Andy guffawed.

  ‘Kirsty?’

  ‘My wife. We’ve got three kids – little tearaways – a little girl and two boys, like us.’ Andy beamed. ‘Didn’t I say?’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’ Freddy had even less to say than about his fancy house. She felt stunned by news which in another life would have been joyous. There was even more family from which she was excluded.

  ‘Kirsty Baxter was at the convent, the year below you. She’s got the same birthday as Mags. That came out last year when they were talking round at Mum’s. First of May.’ Andy held out his glass for a refill, ‘She’s Kirsty Power now. Obviously.’

  ‘Lovely.’ The girls in the lower years at Our Lady had been a blur. Freddy had never heard of Kirsty Baxter and felt nonsensical outrage that the woman had her surname.

  ‘What about you? Kids? Married?’

  ‘Neither.’ Freddy tossed the empty bottle in a bin under the table.

  ‘Oh, one thing,’ Andy gave his thigh a slap, ‘Mum’s will.’

  ‘She left a will?’ Reenie Power was a housewife; her earnings had been pin-money. Fred Power had hated his wife having her own business. Freddy was surprised there was a will; Fred Power didn’t put up with anything he didn’t like.

  Of course, her mum had inherited the fishery when Fred Power died.

  ‘The estate is split between Ricky and me,’ Andy said.

  ‘The estate?’

  ‘The business and the house.’ Andy sucked on his vaper. Puffing steam into the air, he drank the Scotch in one and, lunging across, slammed the glass on the tray of tea things. It tilted on a used teabag which Freddy had forgotten to throw away. ‘Mum never got over you leaving.’

  ‘I didn’t leave.’ Her drink tasted sour. Her mother hadn’t left her anything. It was as if she didn’t exist. Freddy didn’t care about the money. All she wanted was a token, something that told her that in the end her mum was on her side. At times, over the decades, Freddy had indulged in wishful thinking that her mum missed her. She never lost the hope that a message would arrive, asking her to come back. Cross with Sarah and astonished by Mags’s message, she now realised she had misinterpreted the text. Her mum had left her nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ It seemed she hadn’t lost the habit of rescuing Andy.

  ‘Me too, because, obviously, that’s that. Legal restrictions, and we must respect the wishes of the deceased. Mum.’ Andy fiddled with the tassel on his shoe. ‘Kirsty would kick off. She fights tooth and nail for the kids, she’s like Mum.’

  No one was like her mum.

  ‘It’s better I leave.’ Her outer layer flayed, Freddy stung with hurt. She rearranged the bottles in the mini-fridge. Why had her mum cut her out? She understood about her dad, but her mum? Was she frightened he could get to her from beyond the grave?

  ‘No. Hey, listen, I’ve got an idea,’ Andy said. ‘We’ve lost our lady mobile fishmonger. Bloody tragedy. She was murdered by her own son. Toni Kemp told Ricky. Dan crewed for Ricky; a good kid, we thought. Seems he got off his head on drugs and strangled her in cold blood.’ Squinting through narrowed eyes, Andy looked out of the window at his house. Every window was lit. To Freddy, in the growing dark, it could be an office block. ‘Total shock. What with Mum. I wonder, would you take over Karen’s round? Until the funeral. Then you’ll want to go. With your experience at the fishery, it’ll be like getting back on a bike.’ Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, Freddy had the vague sense Andy regretted them. He’d be feeling guilty about the will.

  ‘Karen?’ Freddy felt the alcohol curdle in her stomach. Lots of women were called Karen.

  ‘… you could stay at Mum’s.’ Andy clicked off his vaper and got up.

  ‘You should run it by Ricky?’ Freddy felt sympathy for Andy. As her dad’s favourite and her mum’s only daughter, she had had the edge. Andy had been a cautious boy, he looked before he leapt and, being frightened of heights, mostly didn’t leap at all. When Ricky had come along, barrelling into danger, afraid of nothing, their dad had loved the bones of him. Freddy couldn’t blame Andy for holding on to what their parents had left him. Anyway, she didn’t want a share in ‘the estate’.

  ‘Thanks for thinking of me,’ she said. ‘But really, it’s not worth the aggro.’ It hurt to refuse. She was looking through thick glass at the perfect life. Why had she never thought to be a mobile fishmonger? She could have set up on her own.

  ‘Would you at least stay at the house for the funeral? I’ll sort Ricky.’ Andy rattled change in his trouser pockets like their dad. Fred Power had been reminding them who paid the bills, and himself that he had sway. Andy would be nervous.

  ‘OK, yes.’ Freddy couldn’t help her mum, but she would do anything for her favourite brother. She would go back to the house on Beach Road. ‘Thanks, Andy.’

  When Andy had gone, Freddy took his chair by the window. After a few minutes she saw him, lit by thin lamplight, striding across the car park to his personal castle. She knew it would matter to Andy to have got his own family. Freddy pressed her face to the glass. She had two nephews and a niece who she’d never even seen in a photograph. She was overtaken by a wave of sadness.

  A text from Sarah jolted her mood. We’ll make it work. We’re so good together. Sarah would not give up. Freddy would have to reply. But if she did, then they’d be like the guinea pigs her mum looked after, trundling round and round on a wheel. Making up, arguing, breaking up, making up… With nowhere to call home, it was tempting to slink back. Sarah had wanted to be all the family Freddy needed. A notion that made Freddy short of breath, like having a pillow over her face.

  Freddy opened Google Maps. Newcastle, Grimsby, the north coast of Scotland. She zoned in on Bristol, the city where her mum had been born, but to which, once she’d married, she had never returned. It was a city without an ex. Maybe Freddy could start a fish round there. At the least, there’d be a supermarket with a fish counter.

  Andy had said he’d drop her mum’s house key into reception on his way to the fishery. ‘You’re doing me a favour; the house needs looking after,’ he’d reiterated outside in the corridor. Fancy Andy talking that way about bricks and mortar, Freddy thought now. Perhaps he, too, thought of it as home.

  Freddy was filled with the impulse to text Mags again. She opened her phone and pricked with embarrassment when she saw the text she’d sent from the train.

  Can we meet? Fx

  Mags hadn’t replied. Perhaps Freddy could say she’d be staying at her mum’s house from tomorrow. Freddy put this, then hastily scrubbed the message, as if Mags would read the words without her having sent it. Mags might take the message as a hint that Freddy wanted her to visit. Which it was. Freddy’s stomach clenched. Mags liked honesty. Or so she’d said. Please come to my mum’s house. I’d like to see you. Freddy smarted at the words and deleted it. If Mags refused to come, it would be worse than silence after Freddy’s earlier text. Freddy tossed her phone on the bed.

  Would Andy be angry with Mags because she had told Freddy? She could send her an apology for dobbing her in. More likely, Andy would thank Mags and relate to her how Freddy had got there too late. That would make Mags contact Freddy.

  Freddy stared over at her phone, praying for it to ring.

  It beeped.
Sarah again. I love you.

  It was the first time Sarah had said that. Automatically, Freddy made the sign of the cross and, her cheeks wet with tears, muted her phone.

  Outside, the car park emptied. A light shone in the top window of Andy Power’s house. The rest of the row was dark, yet to be sold. Beyond, the River Ouse flowed fast, black and slick, to the sea.

  8

  TONI

  ‘Andy, I know it’s a crap time.’ Bit of an understatement, since his mother had died hours ago. ‘This is a murder case. Every minute counts.’

  The minutes – days – were slipping away. If the preliminary time that the pathologist had given them was right, Karen was murdered somewhere between six p.m. and ten p.m. on Friday night. Forty-eight hours later they had nothing from the first round of door to doors or the press conference. Circumstantials pointed at Karen’s teenaged son, Daniel, but Toni considered the obvious last. Whatever, she needed something solid soon or Chief Superintendent Worricker – dubbed The Worrier – would have a view.

  Like Ricky’s trawler, Toni had avoided the fishery; the glassy eyes of dead fish staring from the crates gave her the creeps. But when she’d rung Andy to tell him about Karen and Daniel and ask for an interview, he’d said he’d be at the fishery at six for the Monday morning market.

  ‘Not a problem, we’ve all got jobs to do.’ Togged up in yellow wellies and a long white plastic apron, Andy gesticulated at a woman in an office overlooking what was called Market Hall, a vast space crowded with buyers and sellers of freshly caught fish. Not the best place to talk, but Andy had to monitor the sale of the night’s catch. Ricky had gone out on his trawler the night before. They had fallen out. Toni had been aghast that Ricky would fish on the day his mother died. He had said the sea stopped for no one. It won’t stop for you if you go and make a mistake. He’d hired a last-minute crew – which meant second-rate or they wouldn’t have been available – and gone. One stupid decision, because Ricky was desperate for a decent haul, could mean death.

  He must be late landing. That was why he wasn’t in the hall.

  ‘I need a complete list of Karen Munday’s fish-round customers.’ Toni had to shout over the auctioneer. ‘Until we rule them out, they are all suspects.’ She had ruled out Daniel’s dad, Karen’s ex. He’d been in McDonald’s with his wife and two daughters. The poor bloke had gone green when he had to identify his son. By the looks of things, when Daniel Tyler died, he took a big chunk of Tom Tyler with him.

  Men were still carrying crates of fish. Cards were tossed in with the produce, identifying it: sole, bass, plaice. Where was Ricky? Toni tried to keep her mind on her questions.

  ‘I’ll get it run off for you.’ Andy nodded. ‘This is crazy. It can’t be murder. If Karen had heard about Danny’s death—’

  ‘No doubt about it. Anyway, she died before him.’ Toni cut him off. Although Andy was sort of family, he, too, was a suspect. So was Ricky. She could rule him out in principle. Plus, he had an alibi. Ricky had lost a valuable crew member in Danny and, being out with his boat, had had little to do with Karen.

  She spotted Ricky. He was listening to the auctioneer, willing the price to go up. She let herself breathe. Who’d go out with a fisherman? She hoped to God Ricky would get a good sum. His mood was bad enough without being in debt. She had never asked Ricky what he earned. A decent amount, going by his Mazda.

  ‘Did Karen report any difficult customers? You know, made a pass or harassed her? Or, for that matter, has someone complained about her?’ In a lapse of generosity, Toni thought this probable. Through a gap in heavy plastic drapes she could see through to the fish outlet, where a middle-aged man in a trilby and George Smiley glasses was buying a large bag of cod roe. Yuk. She shadowed Andy as he inspected price labels tossed down on sold catches.

  ‘Kaz wouldn’t let them touch her.’ Andy nudged a crate of sea bass in line with others. The trawler’s name, Jacinda II, was embossed on the sides. What had happened to Jacinda I? Toni blinked. Two men had drowned off Beachy Head last year when their trawler had capsized.

  ‘Sorry?’ Andy had said something.

  ‘Didn’t Karen give you a hard time at the convent?’

  ‘Sort of.’ It was a bad idea to return to your roots. You could trip up on them.

  ‘Last week, a man in Ringmer answered the door bollock naked!’ Andy gave a mirthless guffaw. ‘Karen is clutching his dabs and fishcakes and has to watch while he pats himself down for his wallet.’ Andy was back with Karen telling the story. Abruptly, he snatched off his fish-shop panama, bashed it and put it on again. ‘The chap was eighty-five with dementia so you can cross him off.’

  ‘Enemies?’ Toni asked.

  ‘What, apart from you?’ His eye on the loading bay where the buyers were backing up their vans, Andy frowned. ‘Karen was popular. Except with Ricky.’

  ‘Why not with Ricky?’

  ‘He didn’t give her the time of day. For your sake. Otherwise, she was a hit. Kaz could sell oysters to vegans.’

  Ricky had never told Toni that. Filled with love for him, Toni kept a stupid grin off her face. She cast a glance over to where, now by the loading doors, Ricky was counting a wad of notes. Inscrutable as always, he gave nothing away.

  Naked Man might not be a killer, but he was an example of a customer crossing the line with a woman who sold fish on the doorstep. In a fish shop there were generally witnesses. A lonely man, dependent on who delivered the mail and a newspaper, might buy fish to grab two minutes of Karen’s time. And her. If she rebuffed him, then what?

  ‘How does your mobile service work? Are orders booked in advance or did Karen sell on spec?’ Toni was distantly ashamed she’d never asked Ricky about the brothers’ business. Much as she loved him, she couldn’t get excited by a fish’s journey from sea to plate.

  ‘Either. Karen carries – carried – a selection of the night’s catch, including Ricky’s. Usually the more popular species – bass, skate, salmon.’

  ‘Did she have regulars?’

  ‘Yes, although some punters don’t buy for weeks. Plus, she’d be flagged down by a random customer and, like as not, add them to her round for the future. Karen had the gift of the gab.’ A grimace flitted over his face. Toni reminded herself that Andy would be shocked. To be fair, so was she.

  ‘Karen’s round was restricted to residential?’

  ‘Yes.’ Andy corrected himself. ‘No, she carried a few commercial pre-orders, for restaurants, office canteens and the like, bagged up and handed over.’

  ‘Was that usual? Don’t businesses come here to buy in bulk?’ Toni nodded at men – there were a couple of women – lugging crates out of the market. ‘You’ve got a national delivery service, haven’t you?’ This was about as much as she’d gathered from Ricky. Not that he knew the first thing about the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, so she shouldn’t feel bad.

  ‘We do, but Karen did some local stuff. Her idea, saves everyone time,’ Andy said.

  ‘Sounds like she cared about the work.’ More shame, Toni had warned Ricky that Karen would rip them off.

  ‘She was on a bonus, it was worth her while.’

  ‘Who will take over?’ Would you kill to run a fish van?

  ‘Toni, know what? I have no idea.’ Andy took off his hat again and smoothed his razor-sharp haircut. Unlike Ricky, his dark, unruly hair forever storm blown, who lived in jeans and fleeces, Andy kept himself Paul Weller smart.

  ‘Tough call.’ Toni mustered herself. ‘Andy, sorry, mate, I have to ask. Where were you on Friday night between the hours of half five, when Karen was seen in her car on the ring-road, and twelve fifteen, when I found her body?’

  ‘That’s easy,’ Andy said. ‘I was in the fishery until six then I went up to the golf club. I bought a drink or ten for Jerry Ross, a councillor who I thrashed in a game last week. Left about…’ he ran a hand over his cropped hair, ‘it would have been close to seven thirty. Tons of people saw me; the club will have Jerry’s address, o
r the council. I got home about seven forty. Me and Kirsty were in all night.’

  ‘Thanks. And Ricky was on his boat, I know that.’ Toni pulled a face. These days he was always on his trawler. ‘A couple more things. Have you noticed any strangers hanging about? Might someone have clocked Karen on her round and followed her? Checked out where she lived? She was attractive and strong-minded. Some men hate that.’ Had Karen been strong-minded? Toni hadn’t considered this before. At school she’d called it nasty.

  ‘She’d have told me.’ Andy was firm. ‘Or Danny would have told Ricky.’

  ‘Karen might not have known she was being followed.’

  ‘True,’ Andy agreed. ‘We get the odd druggie wanting free cockles and all the cash from the till, but it’s a schlep down here so that’s rare. Karen was mostly out in the van. I suppose she could have been followed in a car.’

  ‘Did you say about the dashcam?’ Ricky materialised by her side.

  It was all Toni could do not to ruffle his hair, pull him close and breath in the sea smells that had become him. While she disliked the fish and diesel stench of the trawler, she couldn’t get enough of them if mingled with the scent of Ricky’s weather-beaten skin.

  ‘There’s a camera on the van?’ She felt a spark of hope; so far this case was what she and Malcolm called Wi-Fi. No leads.

  ‘It’s broken.’ Andy opened a door marked ‘Freezer Room’. Out came a mechanical roar that bounced off the breeze-block walls.

  ‘What is that?’ Toni shouted. It wouldn’t hurt to show Ricky how very interested she was in all things fish. Actually, Toni found she was intrigued.

  ‘Fish go in one end and come out frozen the other. Dad got it off a frozen-food company. Clarence Birdseye invented the quick freeze tunnel in the twenties. She’s about forty years old, our faithful old beast.’ Ricky was positively elegiac. Toni knew he’d be glad to change the subject from Karen and Daniel.

  ‘That’s amazing,’ Toni marvelled.