Death of a Mermaid

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Is Dan dead?’ Daisy asked Toni.

  ‘Yes, Daisy. I’m afraid he is.’ Toni ignored Josie Webb’s Don’t say! semaphore. Her daughter would have to be upset sometime.

  ‘I told him he was going too fast.’ Not the response Toni had expected. Anguish and tears. ‘His mum’s to blame.’

  ‘You remember Dan was going too fast?’

  ‘He was showing off to me.’

  Time after time Toni saw examples of girls being way ahead of boys. It would have been bloody tragic if this particular immature boy had taken this perceptive and sensible girl with him, never mind Karen Munday. ‘Daisy, did Dan say anything to you? How he came be driving his mother’s car?’

  ‘The little liar. He said it was his.’ Daisy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Whatever, she deserved it.’

  ‘You don’t like Daniel’s mum?’ Toni leaned forward.

  Initial findings suggested the driver had taken avoidance action which had placed the Ford in the path of the concrete. Toni put that down to one hell of a distressed kid. But that Daniel had lied to Daisy and that Daisy didn’t like Karen changed the picture of the loving mum and perfect boy she’d gathered so far. ‘Had Daniel argued with his mum, do you know?’

  ‘She was a cow.’ Daisy scowled.

  ‘Darling, this isn’t like you.’ Josie Webb looked terrified. Toni guessed that her girl coming over as a bitch herself suggested Daisy’s head injury had had character-changing consequences.

  ‘Was?’ Toni winged in.

  ‘Is. What are you, my teacher?’ Doubt shadowed Daisy’s face. ‘Is a cow. She makes Dan’s life a misery.’ She put a hand to her neck brace.

  ‘Daisy, darling, don’t talk like that.’ Josie Webb had probably heard Karen was dead.

  ‘I’ll talk how I like,’ Daisy mumbled.

  ‘Do you remember what Dan said about his mum?’ Malcolm asked.

  ‘No. I already said.’ Daisy shut her eyes. ‘Mum, my head hurts.’

  ‘Enough.’ Josie reached for the communication cord. ‘You’ve had your five minutes, please go.’

  ‘Poor kid isn’t out of the woods yet.’ Out in the corridor, Toni pressed for the lift. ‘No mother should have to be at what could well be her child’s death bed.’

  ‘No, she shouldn’t.’ Malcolm checked his hair in the lift’s mirror, a thing he did when he was upset. He caught Toni noticing and dropped his hand. ‘I wonder if it’s a coincidence that Danny nicked the car. Had he perhaps always intended to take Daisy out in it? Pass it off as his own motor, bought on his wages.’

  ‘Good point. There are, after all, simpler ways to kill yourself. Unless they had a suicide pact, why pick up Daisy then write himself off at the beach?’

  The lift stopped on the second floor. Two porters trundled in a gurney on which lay an elderly man, his mouth open as if gasping for air. Toni was thinking he was dead when his eyes snapped open. He beamed at her. Toni hoped she was smiling back.

  Daniel had driven to Daisy’s – how he’d got past Josie beat Toni – then played the big man out to impress his girl by exceeding warp speed. Open and shut. Yet doubt niggled.

  Sometimes it was the open and shut cases that were the hardest to close.

  *

  ‘Karen comes out of the kitchen from cooking the tea. She goes upstairs to relieve herself.’ Malcolm led them back through the living room, past the couch – the box of Maltesers was bagged as evidence or Toni would have been tempted to finish them – and paused outside the lavatory. ‘Karen pulls down her trousers and sits on the pan.’ In another context Malcolm’s ‘I followed her in a westerly direction’ tone would have cracked Toni up.

  ‘Her assailant follows her. Or he’s already upstairs. He steps forward, catches her by surprise. Before she can defend herself, he has her by the throat. Like so.’ He made a grabbing motion. ‘Karen loses consciousness, tips half off the pan and empties the rest of her bladder.’ He indicated a stain by the toilet. Malcolm backed out onto the landing.

  ‘Cold-blooded,’ Toni breathed. ‘Karen went to the loo with the door unlocked. She must have known her murderer pretty well. Or maybe she believed she was alone.’

  ‘Not Daniel then?’

  ‘Don’t be a plonker, Mal. He was her son. She’d been peeing in front of him all her life.’

  ‘My mum locked the door.’ Malcolm flapped his choirboy hair. All his own, it had the look of a wig. Toni suspected him of being in a roundhead enactment group, but he’d never said.

  ‘Not like my dad. Mum said when he went to the loo, we were privy to the privy.’ Toni coughed. She hadn’t meant to go there.

  When Sergeant Malcolm Lane had joined her team a year ago, Worricker had marvelled at how bright he was – a first in astronomy – and hinted that one day he would step into his shoes. Worricker never suggested that Toni might land in his footwear.

  Toni had been primed to hate the fast-tracker who would know the difference between a star and a planet, but from the first day he’d asked Toni astute questions like where to get good coffee and – knock me down with a feather – what did Toni need from him. It had taken less than a week for Toni to develop a grudging liking for the thirty-eight-year-old beanpole (too tall to fit into the ACC’s shoes) with a haircut that owed much to a seventies André Previn, if not the roundheads. Six months in, to Toni’s irritation – she hated Worricker to be right – she thought Malcolm a better detective than any she’d worked with.

  ‘This is where me knowing the victim’s character comes in handy,’ she said. ‘At the convent Karen was first to pile into a fight. She could wind you up to a blind rage.’

  ‘Did she wind you up?’ Malcolm eyed her steadily.

  ‘Me? No.’ He wouldn’t get her on subjectivity. ‘I was terrified of her.’

  ‘It looks premeditated – if only by minutes. He must have come upstairs and opened the door.’ Malcolm rolled his eyes. ‘Unless it was open.’

  ‘We can’t rule that out. Danny’s were the last fingerprints on the handle, but they would be.’

  ‘Boss, you all right working this? You know, with Karen Munday being a friend?’

  ‘She wasn’t a friend.’ Here we go. Toni had headed off Worricker; she should have bargained for Malcolm. ‘It’s twenty years since I knew Karen. I’ve seen her a handful of times since. The last one was in the Co-op the morning she died.’

  ‘Did you?’ Malcolm failed to hide his astonishment that Toni had kept this from him. ‘What did she say? How did she seem?’

  ‘We talked about chocolate,’ Toni said airily. ‘She was the same as usual. I have told Worricker, so keep your hair on.’ Hair reference. Damn.

  ‘Besides, as you must be discovering, round here it’s hard not to have an acquaintanceship with those we serve.’

  ‘Shout if it gets too much.’ Malcolm headed down the stairs. He knew better than to push Toni.

  Toni contemplated the toilet. What a place to die. She hoped that Mags had remembered to light a candle.

  She found Malcolm outside the back door. The yard was tiny with most of the space taken up by plastic bins. The only greenery was ivy on the rear wall. Toni wandered over.

  ‘This is ripped.’ She lifted up a tress. ‘This was his – or her – exit.’

  Malcolm didn’t need to stand on tiptoe to see over the wall. ‘There’s an alleyway here. He could have gone either way to reach the street. But if it was Daniel, why not just go out of the front door?’

  ‘He didn’t want to be seen?’

  ‘But he’d be seen coming around from the alley.’

  ‘Maybe this was his usual way out if Karen had grounded him? That’s his window there.’

  ‘That makes sense. I did that.’ Malcolm nodded. ‘I broke the trellis.’

  ‘There you are then.’ Toni was pleased to hear Malcolm had not been perfect as a child.

  ‘Whoever did it was agile.’ Malcolm ducked back into the house. He was constantly ducking.

  ‘If he did go out over the wa
ll, it suggests that he had some wits about him.’ Toni hoped it wasn’t Daniel. Ricky would be very upset. ‘Andy Power suggested there was a boyfriend.’

  ‘Did he know his name?’ Malcolm looked animated.

  ‘No. Karen might have told Mo, her sister. We’ll talk to the neighbours. In case they saw anyone.’

  ‘They start a row down here. Maybe he says something that riles her, or vice versa. Karen leaves the room. I hate it when Lizzie walks out on a row.’ Malcolm ground to a halt. Toni hoped he didn’t have too many rows; she relied on Malcolm’s domestic bliss for the ecology of her team.

  ‘Karen was strong, she’d have fought like a tiger,’ Toni said. ‘The best way to get her was on the loo, hobbled with her pants down.’ She heaved a sigh. A dead boy and his murdered mother. It had got media attention, which meant Worricker was slavering for a quick solve from a skeleton team. ‘Would you strangle your mother on the loo?’

  ‘No, but then I wouldn’t strangle her anywhere.’ Malcolm was tracing a finger along his scar; a line from his lower lip to under his chin, it resembled a dimple. She had noticed he did it when he was thinking. The two men in her life had scars. Ricky had been hit in the mouth by a swinging derrick or beam; she should know which. She hadn’t asked Malcolm how he got his. It looked relatively recent. Not her business to dig up painful memories. She had enough of her own she wanted kept buried.

  ‘It’s an intimate way to kill someone, and especially in that situation.’ Toni rubbed her neck then snatched away her hand as she caught herself.

  ‘What if she calls out to him as he’s leaving that she’s got a new man? He comes upstairs and Karen’s on the loo. She laughs at him for minding, or some such. Daniel loses it and lunges at his mum. Like we said, he’s already planning to take Daisy for a drive. Karen loses consciousness and he panics. He rushes out, drives to Daisy’s. She thinks he’s showing off – but really he’s lost it.’ Malcolm sounded sad. Like Toni, he’d prefer that Karen’s murderer be a bad stranger. Not a pissed-off hormonal teenager with an Oedipal complex. If it was Daniel, whatever way you cut it, the case was beyond terrible.

  ‘What about this boyfriend?’

  ‘He’s a suspect.’ Toni nodded. ‘He’s also a myth until we find out if he exists.’

  ‘Karen’s hubby, Tom Munday, is alibied, and so is Andrew Power; his golf club visit checks out and his wife, Kirsty, was at home with him all night. Besides, he has no motive. You corroborated Ricky’s alibi. He was preparing his boat and then went out to sea; he was literally on the radar,’ Malcolm said. ‘I’ll have another chat with Mo, her sister.’

  ‘Mo was the nice Munday. Never said boo,’ Toni remembered. ‘You could argue I have a motive, but thankfully I was in the station until the call.’

  ‘Yes, or you’d be the prime suspect.’ Malcolm did his blank stare.

  ‘Anything from customers on her round?’ Toni asked.

  ‘Not so far. Sheena’s onto it. She says they’re shocked. One bloke asked if Sheena was taking over the round.’

  Toni resisted applauding the idea. She was finding Sheena a handful. An idea occurred: ‘What if Daniel didn’t pick up Daisy?’

  ‘We know she was in the car.’ Tactful, Malcolm would be resisting pointing out the bleedin’ obvious.

  ‘We’re putting Daisy as a witness to the crash. Could she have been a witness to Karen’s murder?’

  ‘Or her murderer?’ Malcolm said.

  ‘Jesus. This case has as many holes as a fishing net.’ Toni scowled at the marine analogy.

  ‘We need Daisy to get her memory back.’

  ‘If she ever lost it,’ Toni said.

  ‘You think she’s faking it?’ Malcolm stopped at the Rottingdean lights. He looked at her.

  ‘I’m not a doctor, but I’d say Daisy doesn’t have amnesia. Her recollections were selective.’

  ‘She referred to Karen in the past tense. She could know Karen was dead. Is dead.’ Malcolm was watching the traffic lights; he’d have challenged himself to be off the second they changed.

  ‘No chance. Josie Webb has her girl in solitary, she’s clearly sick with fear about how Daisy might take anything,’ Toni said. ‘More likely the slip means Daisy met Karen in the past, not that she knows she’s dead. I don’t see her killing Karen – you’d think she hadn’t had enough time to find her a pain in the arse. That said, it is odd.’

  The sun had come out while they were at Karen’s house. The sea was a band of glittering silver. The appetising aroma of fish and chips wreathed in through the open window. The shop was next to a beach-supplies on the lane down to the sea. Ten past three. Toni hadn’t had breakfast, never mind lunch. She was about get Malcolm to do a right when the light changed and he accelerated up the hill to Saltdean. Damn.

  ‘Guv?’ Malcolm asked. ‘What’s odd?’

  ‘What? Oh, Daniel and Daisy were an item for a matter of days, yet Daisy has a negative opinion of Karen.’

  ‘She said he talked about her. When you’re in love you open your heart. You swap stories about family and your past.’ Malcolm spoke with feeling.

  ‘These are teenagers, Mal. Kids don’t open their hearts, they act cool.’ Toni never had heart to hearts with Ricky. ‘Actually, Mal, could you do a U-ie? I fancy chips and a pickled onion.’

  11

  FREDDY

  The living room was cold. The blue gleam of the aquarium increased the chill. On the window facing the street the blue and green plastic which Freddy had once helped her mum stick onto the panes had blistered and cracked. Darkness filled the gaps, like lead in stained glass. Freddy switched on the lava lamps and the bulbs of oil began to stir like exotic marine creatures. Sometimes, lying on one of Sarah’s huge leather sofas – with reclining and massage features – in her vast new-build house in Liverpool, Freddy would recall her lost home as a grotto on the seabed.

  As she’d trundled her case back down Beach Road, Freddy had regretted that she’d given in to Andy’s request to stay at her mum’s. She could be on her way to Bristol. She had enough savings for a B & B until she got a job. She could have returned for the funeral. Or not.

  Reenie had put in a new kitchen. In her day, her dad had refused to change anything in the house in which he’d been born. She approved of the IKEA oak veneer. Sarah’s kitchen, sheets of stainless steel, hooks for pans, owed a lot to a pathologist’s mortuary. Freddy guessed that Andy, a driver of progress, had persuaded their mum to splash out. She checked the cupboards. Tins of beans, sweetcorn, a couple of soups: tomato and chicken. Packets of Uncle Ben’s rice. She hadn’t thought to bring food because she hadn’t been hungry. Nor was she now, but she felt empty. Freddy was eyeing the tin of tomato soup when it occurred her that everything in this house belonged to her brothers now. She would take nothing from Ricky specifically.

  On the greying white walls in what had been her bedroom, Freddy saw the ghosts of Spice Girls and Little Mermaid posters. The photos of trawlers she cut from Fishing News. Above her bed had been a drawing of a humpback whale that Andy had done for her. All gone now. In this room, Freddy was aware of the emptiness, the stillness; her mum was dead but so was the little girl who’d slept there.

  A book on a chair by the bed was not a ghost. Malcolm Saville’s Seaside Book. Freddy gasped. It had been a present from her dad for her eighth birthday. What was it doing here? Fred Power hated reading, so Freddy had been surprised when he’d given it to her. Her mum had said, Don’t thank me, I had nothing to do with it. As if the sight of it made her cross. Freddy had devoured instructions on choice of bait and where to fish. It was meant for boys, but she didn’t care. Her dad had said she was as good as any boy. The slim hardback, the cover scuffed and torn, was as thumbed as, she remembered suddenly, Mags’s Revelations of Divine Love.

  Memories swooped around Freddy like bats as she roved through the house. Ricky sulking in the dark on the stairs because Andy had accidentally knocked over the boat he’d built with his bricks. Her mum making fishcakes in
the kitchen.

  The fish swam amidst the ornaments. Her mum still kept two species of tetra: the penguins were black and silver, and she counted four serpaes. A Siamese fighting fish flitted about Princess Ariel perched on her rock. A second ornament featured the little mermaid sat in a boat, her saucer eyes willing the prince to kiss her. Toni used to scoff, ‘Don’t wait, kiss him or dump him.’ Was she like that with Ricky?

  Freddy had never understood why Ariel longed to leave her idyllic palace beneath the sea. The tank, furnished with crumbling arches, shell-encrusted grottos and scattered with sundry starfish and seahorses, was Freddy’s door to a magical world. As a little girl, home from school, she’d sit cross-legged on the shell carpet and gaze into the tank. ‘Better than the telly,’ her mum had said. Freddy was the Mermaid and Flounder her best friend. At the lunette battery with Mags on that summer’s evening, Freddy had confessed that Princess Ariel was her first love. Ariel had made a bargain with the sea witch and won. She had imagined that if she was under the sea with Ariel, the princess would never have wanted the prince.

  Although Toni always took the piss out of the little mermaid in the boat, it was she who had given the ornament to Freddy. She’d nicked it from the pet shop, her gift to the Mermaids when Mags asked her to join. Freddy had blinked with shock. As nice Mr Carter wrapped up Flounder – bought with the money Freddy had saved from her Saturday job at the fishery – Toni pocketed the boat. Outside the pet shop, Freddy had been horrified.

  ‘What if you’d been caught?’

  ‘I’m never caught.’ Toni had sailed about the pavement to Take That’s ‘Could It Be Magic’ on her CD Walkman.

  ‘You’ve done it before?’ Freddy shoved the ornament into her bag. Biting back tears – of shock – she had vowed to save up and pay Mr Carter back.

  ‘Loads.’ Not a boast; Toni dealt in facts. ‘What else d’you need for your fish?’

  ‘It’s a sin!’ At thirteen, Mags was going to be an Anchorite like Julian. ‘Thou shall not steal.’

  ‘Now she’s got the boat, Freddy can get something else next time,’ Toni had explained. ‘Two for the price of one.’