by Cari Hunter
“Think he might be our vic?” Nelson said, looking over her shoulder.
“Most likely. The age is about right.” The boy on the donkey was laughing, the sky behind him a cloudless blue. “Poor sod.”
“Makes you wonder where it all went wrong.” Nelson rustled the set of evidence bags he’d stolen from SOCO’s pile. “Anyway, we need to start bagging and tagging, or we’re going to be here all night.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that. Other than the paperwork, I’ve found a spoon, a fork, and a knife.”
“A serrated, blood-caked knife about three inches in diameter?” he asked, hope shining in his eyes.
She displayed an implement that might have cut through butter on a good day. “Not as such, no.”
“Bugger.”
“I do admire your optimism, though. It’s one of your finest assets.” She took half the bags from him and sealed up the cutlery just in case. “Meet you in the bedroom?”
He laughed. “Can’t refuse an offer like that, can I?”
*
“Not seen you for a while, love.”
Arthur Grimshaw’s gravelly voice made Meg pause at her front door, key half turned, her truffle-sticky thumb still in her mouth. Arthur lived next door but one, and was perennially cheerful despite his metastatic throat cancer and a prognosis he had outlived by reaching Christmas.
“Hey, Arthur. I’ve been staying in the city quite a bit.” She prodded at the icy step with her boot, hoping he would leave it at that.
“Got yourself a new lady-friend, have you?” Showing no inclination to leave it at that, he wandered up the drive toward her. “What happened to the little one? Sanney?”
“Sann-er.” Meg made the correction without thinking. “And we were never a couple, Arthur. Well, not really. It’s hard to explain.” She kicked the step with more force. Her relationship with Sanne baffled them both. They had never been able to decide what, if anything, was going on between them, so defining it in terms that her elderly neighbour might understand wasn’t going to happen.
Fortunately, Arthur seemed to sense her discomfort. He blew on his hands to warm them and then tipped his hat at her. “Just so long as you’re happy,” he said, and gave a phlegmy whistle to bring his dog to heel.
“I am. Thanks.” She returned his wave. “Give my best to Flo.”
He continued to whistle as he wandered back out to the street, the melody altering in pitch and volume without ever becoming recognisable, the dog beginning to yap along with it. The sound stopped abruptly when Meg closed the front door behind her. She stood in the darkened hallway, breathing in the familiar smells of home and then wrinkling her nose at the odour of something forgotten and now decaying.
“Bollocks.”
Two mummified bananas and a furry pear-shaped blob had turned her fruit bowl into a biology experiment. She disposed of them in the compost bin and reluctantly added the withered bouquet of roses that had occupied pride of place on the kitchen table. The card fell from the vase as she lifted it, and the note inside—short and charming, in fountain-penned handwriting improbably neat for a doctor—made her smile as she reread it.
Meg hadn’t lied to Arthur. She really was happy, and she was as shocked as anyone by that. One last-minute, half-jokey date two weeks after returning from a holiday in Greece had led to another, less jokey one, and then a third involving flowers, champagne, and a candlelit dinner. Midway through rinsing out the fruit bowl, Meg shook her head and her smile widened. Emily Woodall had literally romanced the pants off her, and she had surprised herself by enjoying every minute of it.
Tucking the card into her wallet for safekeeping, she returned to more mundane matters. She fished out her list and spread it on the table, putting a big tick through Chuck out rotten stuff and skipping to the next item: Underwear. Although she and Emily were a similar size, Emily favoured frills and lace, so sharing wasn’t an option, not that Emily seemed particularly inclined to swap their clothing around. It was subtle differences like that that always gave Meg pause, forcing her to bite her tongue on a comparison: “Sanne would steal my knickers on a whim” or “San’s got a sweater of mine that she’s had for so long, she’s convinced she bought it,” harmless details that now seemed dangerously loaded. Her friendship with Sanne had become a minefield, to the extent that she hardly dared mention her at all, although Emily often asked after her. At times, Meg felt as if she had lost a vital part of herself—the easy references and conversational shortcuts, the years of growing up together, and the shared memories—but Sanne had put herself at such a distance in the last few months that Meg was no longer sure how to breach the gap or whether Sanne even wanted her to.
Holding up a well-worn bra, Meg tried to remember whether it was hers. She packed it into her overnight bag regardless, having not yet reached the stage of parcelling up all Sanne’s belongings and leaving them on her doorstep. The phone rang and cut off again within seconds, but the sound reminded her to check its messages. With half an ear, she listened to a double-glazing salesman, two hang-ups, and a dental reminder, and she was contemplating deleting them all when the last message stopped her in the middle of the bedroom floor. Bundled socks dropped from her slack hands as she recognised her brother’s voice. She ran to the machine, stumbling over the clothing, but when she tried to replay the message she got the dentist instead. She hit next, jabbing the button with painful force.
“I’ve just been to Mum’s,” Luke said, even that simple sentence sounding like a warning. “We need to talk. I’ll be in touch.”
The machine dated the call as two days ago, and he hadn’t phoned back since. Meg listened to the recording again, picking out street sounds: car horns, the rumble of engines, a merry laugh. He had probably used a telephone box, which left her no way of pinpointing his location or contacting him. She huddled on the edge of the bed, her arms wrapped around her torso as if to ward off a blow. She had no idea how he had found her number, but if he had that then he undoubtedly knew her address.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
Her first instinct was to call Sanne.
Chapter Four
Sitting on the very edge of a sofa that carried a distinct whiff of urine, Sanne watched smoke curl up from Kevin Hopkins’s cigarette. It had taken him four attempts to light it, and his hand was still trembling so violently that he was in danger of extinguishing it again. He sucked on the filter, sending a flare of orange to the tip, and aimed the smoke toward the ceiling.
“Sorry, miss,” he said. “I forgot what you asked me.”
“That’s okay, Kevin.” She kept her voice low and reassuring. From the officer’s account, Hopkins had spent most of the afternoon crying or throwing up. They weren’t treating him as a suspect; according to a discharge note from Sheffield Royal, he had been hospitalised with cellulitis for the last five days. “You’d just said you had a key to Mr. Culver’s, sorry, Andy’s flat. I asked what prompted you to let yourself in there this morning.”
He nodded and knocked ash into a mug. “Buster.”
She patted the head of the dog whose chin had been resting on her knee for the past forty minutes. “What about Buster?”
“I could hear her barking and carrying on. She went mental when I knocked on the door, and Andy would always yell at her if she did that, only he didn’t.” Hopkins stifled a sob by drawing on his cigarette, and then blew his nose on a wet tissue. “I thought he’d gone under on the smack—he’d stopped breathing once before—and the chain was off the door, so I went in, and I found…I found him all black and swelled up like that.”
Buster whined at the sound of Hopkins’s distress, and Sanne scratched the dog’s ears while she waited for Hopkins to settle. She felt her phone vibrate with an incoming call, before the voicemail cut it off.
“Can you remember when you last saw Andy?” she asked, once Hopkins had regained his composure.
“What day is it today?”
“Thursday.”
His fingers
tapped on the chair as he counted out the week. Blisters and open sores on his skeletal arms spoke of a lively heroin addiction, so any timeline he provided would be sketchy at best.
“Maybe last Friday,” he said. “It were the day before I went in with my bad legs.”
She watched Nelson scribble a note. He had taken a back seat in the interview, letting her develop a rapport while recording the salient points for her. The more Hopkins perceived the interview as an informal chat, the more forthcoming he was likely to be.
“And how did Andy seem to you?” At Hopkins’s blank look, she expanded the question. “His mood, I mean. Was he his normal self, or did you notice anything different about him? Did he tell you that he was worried or scared about anything?”
Hopkins took a mouthful from the mug he had shaken ash into, grimaced at the taste, and took another. “I think he was normal. Happy, even. Said things were looking up.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“He might’ve, but we shared a tenner’s worth.” He opened his hands in apology. “Don’t remember nothing after that, miss.”
“That’s okay. You’ve been very helpful.”
Hopkins had already provided a list of Culver’s friends and associates, although Sanne doubted it was comprehensive. Culver’s parents had both died recently, leaving him with no immediate family in the area. Single for six months since the smiling woman in the kitchen photograph had broken his heart by calling off their engagement, he had loved his dog, hadn’t gone out much, and had always used the security chain and peephole.
Still clenching the cigarette between his teeth, Hopkins staggered into the kitchen, where Sanne heard him open and close the microwave. He came back proffering a wad of notes.
“For Andy’s funeral,” he said, dropping the money in her lap when she was too slow to accept it. “They’ll bury him like shit, otherwise.”
Looking down, she estimated his donation ran to almost a hundred pounds. “I can’t take this. I’m not going to be involved in organising the funeral.” She tried to return the notes, but he waved her off.
“Pass it on for me, then. I’d sort it myself if I could.” His face crumpled and he began to cry again, so she folded the money into an evidence bag and put it in her pocket.
“I’ll make sure the Co-op get this. I promise,” she said.
He wiped his nose on his hand and then wiped his hand on his trousers. “I appreciate that, miss.”
She nodded at Nelson, who stood to leave. “If you think of anything else, give me a call on this number.” She set her card on the arm of the sofa and patted Buster’s head in farewell.
“You’ll find who done this, won’t you?” Hopkins said as they reached the door.
“We’ll do our best,” she said, and watched his expression shift from expectant to despondent as he read between the lines.
He nodded, resigned to the inevitable. “Thanks anyway, miss.”
*
Stiffened by multiple layers of paint, the bolts on the back door grated as Meg shoved them into place. This was the first time she had ever used them. One of the reasons she had chosen to live in Rowlee was the sense of safety that the tiny village afforded her, and although the kidnapping case over the summer had made her more circumspect in those first shell-shocked months of its aftermath, keeping her doors locked had seemed enough of a precaution.
She took her frustration out on the lower bolt, slamming it across and kicking its metal handle until it lay flush against the door. Luke had never been to Rowlee. They had met occasionally, at his behest, but Meg had always insisted those meetings took place on neutral ground, a cafe in Manchester that gave no hint as to her home address and where there would be plenty of witnesses. He would cadge money and a fry-up, berate her for not getting in touch with their dad, and then vanish into the crowd. She hadn’t seen him for three years—a gap suggestive of a jail sentence—but one hint of a threat from him and she was triple-locking her doors and jumping at the slightest sound.
Determined not to be hounded from her own home, and with time to kill before her shift, she brewed a pot of tea and took it into the living room. Sweeping out the fireplace seemed too much like hard work, so she draped a rug over her knees and curled on the sofa with her mug. Her mobile rang the instant the tea touched her lips, the hot liquid splashing onto her chin as she jumped.
“Fucking hell!” She wiped her face dry and snatched up the phone. Confident that it was one number Luke wouldn’t have, she answered the call without hesitation, hoping it was Sanne. The voice on the line dashed that hope instantly.
“Ms. Fielding? It’s Clara, from Rainscroft.”
“Hi, Clara. Everything okay?” Meg couldn’t remember ever having spoken to the woman before. The staff at Rainscroft Nursing Home were in a constant state of flux, with new faces replaced by even newer ones on an almost weekly basis.
“Well, there’s been a bit of an incident,” Clara said, in the singsong tone traditionally used with toddlers.
“What kind of incident? Is my mum all right?”
As Clara cleared her throat, prevaricating, Meg could hear someone singing a sea shanty in the background. A door shut, silencing the chorus mid-sentence.
“A man came to visit her,” Clara said.
Mouthing a litany of curses, Meg closed her eyes. “Did he give his name?” she asked, once she was certain she wouldn’t swear down the phone.
“Yes, he did. He said he was Mrs. Fielding’s son Lucas, and she did seem to recognise him when we took him to her room, but a few minutes later, we heard her shouting for help, and, well, he…”
“He what?” Meg wanted to reach down the connection and shake the answer out. With the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder, she grabbed her keys, listening to Clara stuttering something about bruising and a policy of phoning an ambulance. “Cancel the ambulance. I’m on my way over,” she said, and cut Clara off before the excuses could start.
*
Meg threw her wet coat on an empty hook and scribbled her name in the Rainscroft visitors’ book. On the line above, Luke had signed in at 3:50 p.m. He hadn’t signed out again, and he had managed to misspell his own surname.
“You stupid piece of shit,” she muttered.
Seven years older than Meg and as thick as two short planks, Luke had spent most of his schooldays smoking pot and drinking lager on the back field. After failing the two GCSEs he had bothered to turn up for, he had been employed by their dad as a plumber’s apprentice, until his first spell in prison had squandered that opportunity as well. Not long after his release, their dad had ditched the family to live with a seventeen-year-old in London, and that was about the point where everything had gone to hell.
“Meg? Thank you for getting here so quickly.”
Meg dropped the pen back into its holder and shook Rosalind Cairn’s outstretched hand. A stout, bustling woman, Ros had managed Rainscroft for twenty-three years and knew everything there was to know about the residents in her care. Her unwavering dedication was a key reason Meg had chosen to place her mum there.
“What happened, Ros?” Meg followed her down the main corridor, falling into step in the central lounge, where they dodged tottering old women and Zimmer frames and a lone man wielding his walking stick like a fencing sword.
“Careful, Frank, you’ll have someone’s eye out,” Ros said and turned to Meg. “I’m not sure what happened, love. Clara left your brother alone with your mum for about fifteen minutes. She went back when she heard screaming and she found your mum with a number of minor injuries.”
“Jesus,” Meg whispered. “Where was Luke?”
“He pushed past Clara in the doorway and left before anyone could stop him.” Ros held her hands wide apart in a gesture of helplessness. “He’s a big lad, and we have a lot of vulnerable residents.”
“I know.” Meg’s brother took after their dad in a number of ways: drinking, gambling, womanising, and making effective use of the brute force that cam
e from being six foot three and overweight. She had learned at an early age not to argue with him.
Stopping outside her mum’s room, she ran her fingers through her hair, making an effort to compose herself. Through the half-open door, she could hear her mum repeating the same refrain: “No, no, no, that’s bad. No, no, no.”
“Hey, Mum.” Meg went straight over to her and knelt by the side of her chair. “Shh, it’s okay, it’s Meg. Let me take a look at you.”
Her mum blinked when Meg touched her, the chant now inaudible, although her lips still formed the words. She didn’t seem to recognise Meg, but neither did she pull away.
“Could you get me a bowl of warm water and a flannel, please?” Meg asked Ros through gritted teeth. Luke had gripped her mum’s forearms so tightly that he had torn her skin. Bruises encircled her wrists, and his attempts to wrench off her wedding and eternity rings had left further gouges on her fingers. As Meg carefully palpated for fractures, her mum began to cry.
“All finished now. I’m sorry, love.” Meg smoothed back her mum’s hair, kissed her forehead, and dried her face with a handkerchief. “I’ll get you cleaned up, and we’ll have a cup of tea and a biscuit. How does that sound?”
Too distraught for any kind of comfort, her mum stuffed the corner of her hanky into her mouth and took up her chant again.
“He was asking about the house,” Ros said, entering quietly and setting down water and a first aid kit. “Tahir overheard him from the corridor. He wanted to know where the money from selling her house was.”
“Right.” Meg dampened the cloth and scrubbed at the dried blood on her mum’s arms. Devoting her attention to the task stopped her from smashing the bowl and raging against the stupidity of her brother and the senselessness of what he had done. There was no money. After early-onset dementia left her mum incapable of living independently, Meg had been forced to sell the family home to pay for the care in Rainscroft, but the going rate for houses on Halshaw estate was less than half the national average, and at £650 a week, Rainscroft’s fees had soon sucked up the proceeds. Meg was now supplementing a paltry state contribution with her own wages to try to keep her mum in a decent facility where the surroundings and routine were familiar. If Luke had come back to the area to collect his inheritance, he was going to be very disappointed.
