BLOOD DRUGS TEA (A Dark Comedy Novel)

by Saunders, Craig

  “Ask your questions. I’ll do my best to answer them.” He sounded gruff. A different man to the one we had spoken to early. Like the police investigation had galvanised him into the stronger man he looked like. I didn’t like having to ask the questions.

  “Well, Mr Parkinson…”

  “Peter will do.” First name terms with the hunk. Reb would be jealous if he knew. I decided I’d keep it to myself.

  “Peter then…I’m afraid I have to ask some of the questions the police asked. You must understand that you are a suspect, whether you like it or not. I understand this is difficult for you.”

  “But I didn’t do it.”

  “That helps, but I still have to ask the questions.”

  “Ask then.”

  “OK. Forgive me if I get too personal.”

  “Just get on with it,” he said. Not a trace of warmth in his voice. So much for ‘Peter will do’. Perhaps I wasn’t flavour of the month after all. Still, I supposed he’d had just about as much as he could take for one day. Already I didn’t think he’d murdered his girlfriend. I just couldn’t see him calling me if he had. I’d go gentle on him.

  “How long had you known Tracey?”

  “About two years.”

  “Everything OK between you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Of course it was. There was nothing odd between us. We hardly ever fought.” He already slipped into past tense. He was adjusting well.

  “But you did fight?”

  “Yes.” I left it for later.

  “When did you last see her?” I asked.

  “I met her in the local, the Trowel and Hammer, around nine. We had a few drinks. We got into an argument…”

  “So you had a fight? About what?” Maybe it was best to get the tough stuff out of the way.

  “If you must know she’d had an affair about six months ago. I took her back but it was still hard to talk about. It came up in conversation and I was probably a bit of an arsehole about it. We had a fight and she walked home alone. I wouldn’t have let her ordinarily but she was so pissed off at me I didn’t have a choice. I thought about tailing her home just to make sure she was alright but I didn’t in the end.”

  “Who was she seeing?” I got my little notebook out and licked the tip of my pencil because I’d seen people do it on the telly. It wouldn’t write and I had to dry it off on my jeans.

  “James Tamerlain. A teacher, I think. He should be a suspect.”

  I wrote the name down. “Do you happen to know where he lives?”

  “No. I know he works for the local school, St Mary’s primary on Chapelfield. She met him at the school fete and we were going through a bad patch.”

  “You didn’t live together.”

  “No, she wouldn’t move in with me. I asked on several occasions.”

  “After the argument what happened?”

  “She left alone. She was only round the corner from the pub, a ten-minute walk door to door. She wouldn’t let me walk her home.”

  “What time was this?”

  “About a quarter to twelve.”

  “So no one knows where she was from twelve to three in the morning?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

  “No, none of her friends or family live close by. She had some friends from aerobics but they live in the outskirts. She wouldn’t have gone there.”

  Hmm, I thought. Three hours to kill and nowhere to go.

  “What about her friends, were they close?”

  “No, she kept herself pretty much to herself. She went to work and on the evenings she wasn’t seeing me she stayed in. She only went to aerobics twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  “Where was that?”

  “At the Southport Community Hall. She’d been going there for a while. About a year, I think.”

  “How did you meet Tracey?”

  “A couple of years ago I was working for Lytyle’s, the shoe manufacturer. She was working in the secretarial pool there. I asked her out.”

  “Had she been upset about anything? Do you know if there was anyone new in her life? Had she been seeing anyone else?”

  “What do you mean? I told you she’d seen someone else.”

  “But that was over, right? Did she see anyone else apart from you?”

  “I don’t think so. I wish you wouldn’t ask stupid questions. We were together and that was that. We’d pretty much gotten over her little indiscretion.”

  “She had a wedding band. Did you give it to her?”

  “No, I’d never seen her wearing a ring. She didn’t go in for jewellery.”

  Hmm I thought. Mysterious.

  “Did you know she was a user?” I blurted before I could think better of it.

  “A user of what?” he sounded mystified. I left it alone. Perhaps they did it in the dark. I didn’t like to pry. Well, not much.

  “Right,” I said. “I think that will do for the time being. There’s enough to be going on with. If I think of anything else can I call you?”

  *

  Harry looked at me as I came off the phone. Her hair was greasy and hung limp over to one side of her head. I guessed all the dope this morning was playing havoc with her hair glands, or whatever it is that makes hair greasy. I felt mine, it seemed alright. I’d had a bath earlier. I would have taken Harry in the bath with me if she’d have let me. I gave Joe a funny look without meaning to. There was no rancour in it, just a little touch of jealousy.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  “Yes. It seems she was a fit lass. Did aerobics twice a week. Seems to have been holding everything together pretty well for a smack head. I don’t get the impression that her boyfriend had too much of a hold on her. She’d been seeing someone else a few months back. We should look into that. Harry, tomorrow can you and Joe go to the St Mary’s and see if you can blag your way in to see one James Tamerlain. He’s a teacher there. It’s a primary so try lunch time. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I’m beat. I’m going to go to bed.”

  I didn’t like leaving anything too important to Joe but I wasn’t about to go routing around at a primary school worrying the teachers. Joe was better at that and Harry was as charming as pie. Joe still seems to suffer from the occasional bout of psychosis though, so I never knew just how good he’d be questioning witnesses. But Harry would be good at it and where Harry went Joe went. It was just one of those things. I’m sure Joe knew when he was suffering from paranoia. Takes one paranoiac to recognise another, I suppose.

  “Well, what else did he say?”

  I flopped down onto the couch. It was only seven o’clock but I was beat. I’d hadn’t slept the night before. I didn’t suppose this night would be up to much either but I’d try. When Harry and Joe left I’d have another joint and see where that led me.

  “Not much. I get the impression he’s barely holding it together. The police think he’s prime suspect but I don’t see it myself. I mean if he’d killed her why would he talk to me?”

  “Good point. I wouldn’t talk to you if I’d killed someone. He must have heard of you too.”

  “Not everyone reads the locals. It’s not like I’ve ever made national news.”

  “Anyway, there’s something else. There’s three hours of time unaccounted for.”

  “What, pub kicking out time to time of death?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  *

  They left and I got ready for bed. I smoked a joint to give sleep a helping hand.

  I kept thinking of three. Three hours. Three words on a wedding band. Evermore my love. I was wondering about three. Three names. Have you ever seen Conspiracy Theory? Three names. I wondered if Peter Parkinson or James Tamerlain had middle names. Three is the magic number. Music is magic, that’s why it’s all produced nowadays – it’s a way to control the power of the unrestrained soul. The true musical shamans were all taken at 27. Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin. I
’m sure there’s more. Maybe Jimi Hendrix was one.

  Add up the letters of their names, and you get eleven. That’s a prime number. I don’t know why prime numbers are important, but they plays on your mind, after a while. They have resonance.

  Three’s an important prime number, too, but then so is 27. It’s an important number (why? Don’t be daft, no it’s not) well, it’s a prime number. What, two and seven? No, nine. Nine’s not a prime number. Well three is.

  That’s pretty much the gist of what I was thinking.

  I wasn’t really sure what I was thinking. It was the gear talking. I took another toke and held the smoke in my lungs while rocks dropped in the ashtray on my chest. My head was propped up on a couple of pillows and I had a candle burning on the bedside cabinet.

  My head kept coming back to three. When you get right down to it there’s three sides to every story.

  Um, OK, whatever. Lyndon Walker Smith?

  I had too many thoughts going on in my head. Conversations in my head weren’t good for me. I put out the joint, rolled over and tried to leave thought behind for sleep.

  The girl had definitely been murdered. But why did she go up in the multi-story anyway? Who had thrown her off was the burning question but it didn’t make sense. Where had she been for three hours? I would call Johnny in the morning and see what he thought about it. I put it out of my head until the morning. It would keep.

  For now I took my Prozac, which I kept beside the bed. I wondered if I needed it because I was depressed, or because I couldn’t do without it. Then I got annoyed about GlaxoSmithKline, with its evil three-barrelled name, like the assassins, the CIA, and Bayer (which had five letters, which fit three times into GlaxoSmithKline), its vicious dogs gnawing on my bones, and convinced myself it hurt. I got up and took a couple of Dihydrocodiene with two parts scotch and went back to bed.

  Eventually, I dreamt of cheese.

  *

  Monday

  8. Taking the Phone off the Hook

  I slept badly. I’d woken up at three o’clock and smoked another joint and watched some drivel on telly. I’d drunk something like seven cups of tea, too. I’d lost count. I watched telly on the couch with the duvet over me and put on the small gas fire that occupied my barren hearth.

  Eventually I got up. Goo coated the inside of my mouth. It was seven o’clock. I watched the news on the telly in kind of a daze. Getting up seemed like a bad idea. I had a drug hangover from the day and night before and felt groggy. I laid back down after getting dressed, fully clothed now in a lumberjack shirt with thermal undie-cum-teeshirt underneath and new, still solid, jeans. I left my socks off and put my feet under the duvet I’d folded up at the end of the couch.

  My feet smelled of last night’s dreams.

  Smoke sank through the early morning light to rest on the couch, adding to the odours of the night before. I got up and opened a window to let some of the rank air out to greet a new day. I put a pot of coffee on to help clear my head. By nine o’clock I’d been to the toilet three times, had a good coffee sweat on and had finished off a pot all to myself.

  The morning telly shows were coming to an end when Joe called.

  He told me to meet him at the public library.

  *

  I made it there for ten o’clock. My hair was dripping from the drizzle outside. The library was a new building on an old plot. A massive glass construction, it was surrounded by a spiked fence. No fence should end in spikes. People have a primeval urge to stick things on spikes. Cans, polystyrene cups. Heads.

  I went in.

  The library was quiet. I mean people quiet. Perhaps I should have said people were sparse, but you know what I meant. It was, after all, early Monday morning. I found Joe in front of a computer.

  “Any news from Reb on the toxicology report?” he asked.

  “No, nothing yet.”

  Joe barely paused for breath before starting in on Reb. It was like a sport with him. A blood sport at that. Gays and girls. His pet hates. A psychologist would have a field day with our Joe.

  “You know he’s gay. Well, not that it matters if he’s gay. I think he’s a pusillanimous toad, but it’s not necessarily that he’s gay that bugs me.”

  “Do you even know what’s pusillanimous means?” I ask.

  “Cowardly.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say that then?”

  “I don’t know, I guess I just got bored of calling people cowards. Don’t you ever get bored of calling the people the same names over and over?”

  “No. I wouldn’t know. I’m not judgemental.”

  He was looking something up online. I left the Reb conversation alone. I knew we’d have it again someday anyway.

  Joe tried to write down an address but couldn’t get the pen to work.

  “Stupid fucking pen. In our day and age things are still made for ease of manufacture, rather than ease of use. I bet it was designed by a woman.” Joe’s also, among other things, a sexist pig. Which is just one more reason I can’t figure out why he’s with Harry. “I bet Reb would hate that. He must hate women.”

  I sighed quietly in deference to the hush of the library. “Just because he’s gay it doesn’t mean he hates women.”

  “He must do. Anyway, women are stupid but should be objects of pity, not hatred.”

  “Right,” I said. I thought this was a line of conversation I’d better leave alone.

  I thought about Joe, spending so long away on the boat, but I didn’t say anything. Never accuse a burly man with a penchant for cable knit sweaters of gayity. My maxim for life. Or was it an axiom?

  “I mean, it’s not natural. Only women spray after themselves in the toilet. Men just turn their noses up a little and smile a slight smile, as if mildly disgusted and pleasantly surprised at the same time. That’s the right way to take a dump.”

  He was flitting from one thing to the next without taking a step in between. It was a sign. Not the only sign. I didn’t think he’d be long on sanity’s shores.

  Joe’s opinions were a little right of centre. I could stomach it but I’m not sure the other patrons of the library could be so magnanimous about his not so little bigotries.

  “Alright Joe,” I said, just to shut him up and get him off his soap box. “I get the point. What are you doing?”

  “This,” he said. Joe finally got his pen to work and wrote down James Tamerlain’s address on a scrap of paper, which he handed to me with a flourish, beaming with pride at his cunning.

  “He’s more likely to talk to us if we catch him at home. We’ll go tonight.”

  *

  We went downstairs for coffee. There were giant glass windows covering the front of the library and the coffee shop faced out toward the centre of town. It wasn’t the best view but the library looked impressive from the outside. It was a bright airy building and I liked it. It felt summery, despite the season. The clouds kept themselves to themselves and didn’t bother us indoors. They were hanging down ominously, upside down hills and vales like a row of fat arse Matisse birds hanging in the sky.

  Harry met us there after we’d sat down with our coffee. Pill was at work today and wouldn’t be coming out to play. She waved and came over to us with her own coffee and sat down between me and Joe. Her knee brushed mine as she sat down and I jumped guiltily.

  She put some stuff in her pockets, the little sugar packets.

  “Why do you do that?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “You never know.”

  “You’re a goof,” I said.

  “Well, you’re an onaninny!” she called me back.

  “What’s an onaninny?” I said perplexed, and believe me with a face like mine I don’t do perplexed well.

  “Well, it’s a wanker, and a ninny,” she said. “It’s slightly less of an insult than just a wanker. You know, the ninny makes it, not so harsh.”

  “You’ve got to stop making up words. Puddleplapster.”

  “What!”

  “Ah,
look it up.” I went to get another cup of coffee for me and Joe with a smile. Harry and I have better conversations than she does with Joe. Just one more reason why she should be with me.

  The café was psuedo-American fifties, done English style, so there’s chrome on the stools, the milkshakes taste like post war rationing and the table cloths are quintessentially English, red and white check with brown sauce stains. The coffee sucks too, but I have it anyway and watch the winter go to work outside. I came back to the table and Harry and Joe were just sitting there, not even looking at each other. I guessed they hadn’t spent the night together. I could usually tell when they had, they at least looked at each other then. They were so cold together I wondered for like the zillionth time what it would take to break them up.

  “So, Joe, how you feeling now? Feel ready to you know,” I tried to look encouraging, “get back on the case?” I asked as I came back with two fresh coffees.

  “Yes, yes. Much better. Much better.” He looked confused, just for a moment, the look flitting across his thick brow. “I used to think they watched me, stealing my ideas. I didn’t think they could read my ideas through telepathy or anything. I just thought they were secretly watching me and stealing ideas I had and putting them into films and movies and never telling me but making loads of money from it and not from selling pipes like they said – I’m sure the pipe were just a front. Bloody vampires.”

  “Er, Joe…that doesn’t sound better.” This outburst wasn’t totally unexpected.

  “What? Vampires? That’s stupid is it? I don’t believe in vampires anyway.” Joe made a “Pahfrm” noise and looked away. I didn’t know what to say and Harry looked worried.

  Oh dear. Joe wasn’t going to be much use today either. He had that far away look in his eye and Harry looked at me with concern etched on her face. I’d have to do it myself. I didn’t fancy doing anything much today but it seemed like Joe was having a bad day and I couldn’t leave it all to him and Harry. Perhaps he’d calm down a little bit later. I didn’t ask him about it. I don’t like to draw attention to it when Joe has a funny turn. I wondered if that was why he couldn’t work on the boats anymore. There’s a thin vein of psychosis underlying Joe’s normal surly misdemeanour sometimes and that tends to put people off of spending any deal of time together in close proximity. Harry seems to deal with it fine though.