Death of a Mermaid

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘C’mon, babes. Bed for us, I’ve been awake about twenty-four hours.’ Ricky gave a vast yawn and shrugged up the collar of his fishing jacket.

  Outside on the forecourt, Toni looked up at Mags’s window. Although it would have allayed her doubts, Toni dreaded to see Mags there and know that, as well as avoiding Freddy, Mags was avoiding her too.

  34

  FREDDY

  There was no sign of Andy when Freddy returned the van to the fishery. Ricky was out on the boat. Andy hadn’t asked about Sarah. Had he guessed their true relationship? She should tell him. He’d support her over a vengeful ex. But Sarah wasn’t out for revenge, she was on Freddy’s side. With the bit between her teeth, Sarah would work at loopholes and tease out obscure clauses to win her the fishery. But for Freddy, winning would be losing. She would lose her family for ever. Pray God Sarah would drive to Liverpool and get on with her own life. Freddy felt a twinge of guilt. Sarah was only doing what she thought was best.

  The unsold fish lay reproachfully on thawing ice in the van. The round, like any retail outlet, was weather dependent. It had rained all morning, with more forecast for tomorrow. People wouldn’t pop out to buy a fishcake, only to get soaked. Freddy suspected her sales so far were a vote of sympathy. They’d dwindle when Karen’s murder was out of the news. Brought up to be the best, even in the short time Freddy planned to run the round she’d wanted to exceed targets. It was pitiful to compete with a dead woman.

  Freddy parked at the back of the compound by the rows of shipping containers in which were stored discarded fishing gear such as kits – boxes for fish – and spare machinery parts for the descaler and the freezer tunnel. One was marked ‘Bait Motel’ – Ricky’s sense of humour, Andy had said. Freddy smiled now. It was hers too. Freddy had not reminded him how their dad would have called the rusting containers a shanty town. Were Fred alive now, he would not have collected redundant nets for recycling. Not my problem, I’ve got mouths to feed. Her dad had boasted of a ‘tight ship’. Freddy frowned. Since David Bromyard had claimed she’d been on his trawler with her dad, she’d had flash images of a deck, red life-rings, a giant arm dipping out from the side into the sea. She’s a brave little lass, Fred. A memory? No, auto-suggestion. She’d been on a trawler more recently. Freddy wanted to fish from a trawler. She had the introductory marine fishing qualifications. Her thirty-eighth-birthday present from Sarah was a three-week course in Oban in Scotland. Sarah had visited at weekends, grousing when Freddy was too deep in commercial fishing manuals to be grateful to Sarah for her present or her presence. More likely, Bromyard had been sucking up to her to reach Andy. All Freddy’s life, people had cosied up to the Powers, for jobs, cheaper fish.

  The van’s freezer only functioned with the generator running so no stock could be kept in it overnight. Holding back a bass fillet for her dinner, Freddy laid the remaining fish into polystyrene boxes. She’d had a run on smoked haddock. Cullen skink was popular everywhere. She should note who bought what from which street. Yesterday, in a cul de sac near Lewes town centre, three chatty neighbours convinced each other to buy a total of eight plaice fillets. Would they all want plaice next week? Would they want anything from Freddy at all? Like small animals, while humans were creatures of habit, they liked a change. Freddy would need at least a month to understand buying trends. She wasn’t leaving until Mags came back from where she had gone on her pilgrimage.

  With a long-handled scraper, Freddy raked melting ice out of the van onto the concrete. She’d forgotten to put on the pair of wellies that Andy had lent her. Her trainers were soon soaked.

  Freddy had believed she was telling the truth when she’d assured Andy – and Sarah – she didn’t want a share in the fishery. Yet, once, it had been all she’d ever wanted. Sarah got frustrated when, maudlin over a bottle of wine, Freddy maundered on about how she’d have bought a trawler – a fleet – managed the whole process. Sarah pointed out how Freddy’s plans featured Freddy as boss-lady with her brothers in second place. God had heard and tipped the scales.

  Washed-out light slanting from the freezer room illuminated a skip filled with ghost fishing gear – the equipment retrieved by fisherman from the sea. Not only a philanthropic act, stray gear was a hazard; it could sink a trawler. Freddy lugged the boxes inside.

  Freddy felt pride in Andy for spearheading a local recycling scheme. He’d put it on his kids, but she knew him. Andy only did what he wanted. Andy had the job she’d wanted. Ricky and Andy had both stepped out from Frederick Power’s shadow, but unlike Freddy they hadn’t had to relinquish their dreams.

  Freddy went ice cold. Not from being in the freezer room. As when she’d seen the dent on Ricky’s car, she had a presentiment of evil. Would Ricky kill to keep his dream alive?

  Quickly, she stacked the boxes in a corner and laid the sign saying ‘Karen’s Round’ on top. She didn’t feel inclined to change it.

  If Freddy told the boys what their dad had said, would they, as Toni predicted, forgive her? Her brothers were nicer men than their father. No way had Ricky tried to run her down.

  Freddy slammed shut the freezer door and bolted it. She’d been walking back to her mother’s house each night – her own pilgrimage – but rattled by her train of thought, wanted only to get away.

  The tyres splashed in meltwater as she reversed out from the containers. A light burned in Andy’s window. He was at his computer. He’d told her he handled orders from restaurants and wholesalers. He handled everything. It was ten to eight: he should go home. The fishery was only quiet between six in the evening and three o’clock the following morning, when packers and processers would arrive to handle the catches of the day.

  If she stopped by, Andy would ask her about sales and Freddy would have to admit they were average. She drove out of the fishery.

  *

  Freddy leaned on Mags’s buzzer.

  No answer. She stepped back and craned her head up at the window of what Toni had told her was Mags’s flat. She could see the ceiling of one room. A simple lampshade. Other windows in the block reflected fluffy clouds in the evening sky, suggesting that, as Toni had said, the light was on.

  Reluctantly, Freddy gave up. She drove to her mother’s with a dull sense of foreboding. When ever would the Mermaids be together again?

  It might be spring, but it was colder in Reenie’s house than outside. Freddy put a match to the fire she’d laid that morning and switched on the lava lamps. Sarah would have found the murky underwater light in the room depressing, but for Freddy it was bliss. As she set about feeding the other inhabitants – Roddy the degu, Karen’s hamster Brad and the fish – she felt a semblance of relaxation.

  A red, speckly guppy was nosing around Flounder as if to encourage a response from him. Roddy had probably been working at the bars all day – he struck her as neurotic. It wasn’t fair to blame him for being owned by David Bromyard; besides, he belonged to Mrs Bromyard. Nor was it fair to blame David Bromyard for having been friends with her father. Outside the house Fred Power could be charming, full of jokes and generous. Only Fred’s family saw his dark side. The reason that Freddy wouldn’t let Roddy out of his cage was that, as Toni had said, degus took a lifetime to recapture.

  Freddy had bought a portion of chips in town. She took it through to the kitchen, got the bass out of her bag and began preparing her supper.

  She dropped butter into a frying pan and, when it had melted, doused the white side of the fish in the golden pool. She turned it skin side down in the sizzling pan. Her mum used to have an Aga; always on, it had kept the cottage warm. Somewhere along the line it had been swapped for an induction hob, probably Andy’s doing. Freddy quartered a lemon, tipped the chips out onto a plate and scattered vinegar over them. The brown sort, not one of the wine varieties Sarah insisted on. And without Sarah there to object, Freddy scattered a liberal pinch of salt. She slid the bass onto the plate.

  Flames had engulfed the logs. Freddy tossed in another and, laying her plate o
n Andy’s fish table, settled to watch The Little Mermaid. The lava lamps’ blue and green glow, mingled with the muted aquarium light, washed over her. Evening light filtered through the coloured plastic. The shells patterning the carpet, their turreted whorls and spires tinted fawn, orange and purple brown, became the sea bed. She was in King Triton’s kingdom, away from the struggles of the human world. Freddy ate her fish and chips, hungry for the first time since her mum died.

  Aged twelve, Freddy used to watch the film with Mags and Toni, scoffing sweets and guzzling squash and Coke. It had been Mags’s idea, one afternoon as she and Mags had paraded arm in arm along the shore, to call themselves the Mermaids. In their later teens, the Disney movie became a backdrop for less innocent pastimes. Coke was mixed with Jack Daniel’s, the soundtrack drowned by innuendos and hysterical giggles over their revised narrative, in which Ariel got off with the prince in the boat – Toni’s idea – or Ariel entered a mermaid’s nunnery – this from Mags. Freddy didn’t offer her fantasy. It featured herself in the boat with Ariel, comforting her because the poor dear prince had drowned in a shipwreck. The princess soon stopped being sad.

  All evening Freddy still expected Sarah to turn up, but by eleven, when she thought she was safe, there came the knock. She paused the film and crept into the hall.

  ‘Freddy. Me.’ Toni.

  Freddy flung open the door.

  ‘I’m worried about Mags.’ Toni strode in. ‘Me and Rick went to her flat. No sign. That light could have been on for security, but Ricky saw post on the mat. He says she’s on a pilgrimage, but I checked with the library and they say she’s sick.’ She glanced at the television. Freddy saw her take in the film.

  Freddy felt cold, although flames crackled in the fire. ‘I had this text four days ago. I was going to tell you, but…’ They both knew why she hadn’t told Toni.

  ‘She’s walking on a pilgrimage? Funny way to put it – do they do them on bikes?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Yes, I thought that too,’ Freddie blurted out. ‘I know it’s ridiculous, but could she be trapped in the battery? Maybe she tripped and got knocked out? That night when she was meant to meet me. It’s where I found Julian.’

  ‘Whoa, slow down. If she was trapped, why send a text saying she’s on a bloody pilgrimage?’ Toni’s gaze was fixed on the screen, where Ariel was combing her hair with a fork at the prince’s supper table. ‘So, drama over then, that’s a relief.’ Toni didn’t look relieved.

  ‘Mags would never go on a pilgrimage without Julian’s Revelations,’ Freddy insisted.

  ‘OK.’ Toni zipped up her anorak. ‘There’s one way to find out.’

  *

  They were going to the lunette battery. Not a police search, Toni reiterated; it was unofficial. There was no reason to think Mags was in danger. Freddy clung to those words.

  ‘If Mags has gone to Lourdes, she’d have taken the Revelations of Divine Love,’ Freddy said again. She was hunched on the heated seat in Toni’s Jeep, a tank of a thing with tyres more suited to the desert than to Newhaven’s streets. A lavender air freshener in the shape of a police officer’s helmet swung like a thurible from the rear-view mirror.

  Freddy found herself longing to be safe in the subterranean light of her mum’s front room. She was sick with dread about what they might find at the battery.

  ‘This calls for chocolate!’ Toni braked outside the Co-op. ‘I’ve given up smoking.’

  ‘I didn’t know you did smoke.’ At the convent Toni had been more passionate about the perils of cigarettes than the Trinity. Her campaign had started after her dad – a chain-smoker – was murdered.

  ‘I don’t.’ Toni went off into the shop.

  Freddy glanced around the Jeep. It smelled of leather and lavender. Solid and tangible. She hadn’t expected Toni to take her seriously. It made everything real. Something had happened to Mags. Something awful.

  ‘Bet you still like them!’ Toni dropped three Creme Eggs into Freddy’s lap. ‘Old stock left over from Easter, but they’ll be fine.’

  Freddy’s mind worked fast. At school Toni hadn’t only been a militant anti-smoker. ‘Please say you didn’t nick them.’ She tensed, as if the clutch of eggs were hand-grenades.

  ‘I didn’t nick them,’ Toni parroted.

  ‘Christ, Toni, you’ll be chucked out of the police if you’re caught.’ Freddy now knew a lawyer and a copper who broke the law, easy as you like.

  ‘Have I ever been caught?’ Toni’s pride was palpable.

  ‘Take them back.’ Freddy thrust them at Toni. ‘Say you’re on a diet, you bought them in a moment of weakness.’

  ‘Du-uh. That is how to be caught.’ Toni was cheery.

  ‘Stealing is a sin. For God’s sake, think! Why did Jesus die?’ Freddy had appealed to precisely the wrong source.

  ‘I don’t know, why did Jesus die?’ Toni was the straight guy. ‘Not from too much chocolate. Come on, Freddy, this is a crisis. Think of Sister Agnes.’

  Sister Agnes had had a soft spot for Toni. She’d slip her Twix bars in breaks and award her commendations, even when she forgot to tidy the prayer books. The Kemp family’s conversion to Catholicism had been pragmatic, but while Amy Kemp had got stuck in, Toni remained sceptical. Yet she had a strong notion of crime and punishment. She had once told Freddy she feared her piss-takes of the Hail Mary and Our Father had caused her dad’s murder. It hadn’t surprised Freddy when she’d joined the police.

  ‘Then I’ll go.’ Freddy was out of the Jeep and in the Co-op before Toni could argue. The cashier, a pimply kid with product-laden hair, eyed her like he knew why she was there.

  Nonetheless, she felt terrible about the Creme Eggs. However she had come by them, like Sister Agnes, Toni had meant them as a present. Unlike Sarah, who always got Freddy things she thought she should have: a posh briefcase, a fountain pen – stuff Freddy had no use for – Toni had remembered what Freddy liked. She knew Freddy.

  The first aisle was tins of pulses, baked beans, soups. Fruit and veg were on the left.

  She found the Creme Eggs jumbled in a bin right in the sightline of the cashier. It would be as hard to surreptitiously return the stolen goods as to steal them. Affecting interest in the cut-price Lindt rabbits, Freddy was aware of the eggs softening in her sweaty hand. Panicked, she chucked them onto the bin and trotted to the exit. She had cleared the trolleys when a siren blasted. A light over the door flashed.

  ‘Stop. Hands above your head.’ Sweet Jesus.

  ‘I haven’t stolen—’

  ‘I’ve pressed the panic button, the police are coming,’ the boy at the till informed her.

  ‘Please, there’s no need,’ Freddy stammered.

  ‘They will arrest you,’ he told her.

  A knock on the glass door. Toni was gesticulating at the cashier.

  ‘We’re closed!’ he shouted.

  ‘She’s the police.’ Freddy lowered her arms.

  The door swished open.

  ‘What’s occurring?’ Whack. Toni slammed her badge on the counter.

  ‘You took your ti—’ Toni’s warning glance silenced Freddy.

  The cashier explained that he’d apprehended a shoplifter.

  ‘Please would you empty your pockets, madam?’ Toni asked Freddy.

  ‘Yes, officer.’ Freddy fought a rush of wild laughter.

  ‘Ho hum.’ Toni scrutinised the scrunched tissues, a receipt for milk and bread (from the Co-op) and coins laid out by the scratch-card dispenser. ‘It seems you were mistaken, sir.’ Her smile rivalled that of the Madonna. ‘We can let this lady go on her way.’

  CCTV. Freddy cast about. The camera was focused on the confectionery section. Toni had known that she would not be seen when she took the eggs from the bargain bin.

  ‘She never bought anything,’ the man complained.

  ‘That is disappointing, but not a crime,’ Toni said.

  ‘You were here before.’ The boy had recognised Toni. Freddy felt faint.

  ‘I
bought chocolate.’ Toni always paid for something.

  ‘Police.’ A tall thin man stalked past the trolleys into the shop. He saw Toni and stopped. ‘Guv, what are you doing here?’

  His pudding-bowl haircut was vaguely comic, but Freddy instinctively knew not to underestimate him.

  ‘I was passing.’ Toni was smooth. ‘You?’

  ‘Me too. Heard it called in.’ He regarded Freddy. She smiled. He didn’t smile back.

  Out in the street, Toni was hearty. ‘Mal, this is Freddy Power. We were at the convent back in the day – she’s Ricky’s sister. The assistant had her for a crim!’ She put on a severe face. ‘Detective Sergeant Malcolm Lane to you, Freddy.’

  ‘Actually, I really need to talk to you in private, boss,’ Malcolm Lane said.

  ‘Sure.’ Toni pulled an odd face at Freddy. ‘Catch you soon, yeah?’

  Freddy was crushed. Had Toni been humouring her about Mags all along?

  35

  TONI

  ‘Guv, the Munday murder.’ Malcolm wandered over to Toni’s Jeep. ‘Could we have made a mistake?’

  ‘Don’t you start.’ If Malcolm looked inside, he’d see she wasn’t carrying her police radio and couldn’t have picked up the call. ‘No, we couldn’t have.’ Toni worried Freddy hadn’t got her hint that their search was only delayed. She hadn’t wanted Malcolm to realise she and Freddy were together before he arrived or he’d sniff a rat around the shop-lifting debacle.

  ‘What if Mrs Haskins was right and there was a man?’ Malcolm ignored her.

  ‘Then I’m a llama.’ Pulling her hands down her face, Toni paced away from the Jeep. The night was going from fairly bad to very bad. Since they’d wrapped up the paperwork, Toni had shut the hatch on her niggle of doubt. Was the killer of Karen Munday still out there?

  ‘Her sister, Mo, asked to see me. She said Karen was seeing someone. Mo thinks he might have been married. She even wondered if it might be a woman because, quote, “Karen had a weird streak.”’