The Hissing of the Silent Lonely Room (The Christy Kennedy Mysteries Book 5)

by Paul Charles

  ‘Leaning against the wall…’ Jim continued, seeming to recall the scene in his mind’s eye.’

  ‘Humph,’ Jill grunted, agreeing. ‘Some people have no respect whatsoever for other people’s homes. He’d stand there, hands deep in pockets, leaning against the wall. I’d have to wipe the wall down after he left, every time, in case it had smudged. Anyway, he’d stand there lecturing her about something or other in front of us. Part of me would want to leave them alone…’

  ‘But the other part of you wouldn’t want her to be left alone with him, isn’t that right, Ma?’

  ‘Yes. I’m not nosy by nature. But it’s our house. And if he’s coming over here upsetting her, well…’

  ‘…We weren’t having any of it, were we?’

  ‘No, we weren’t, Pa. Be a dear and get us a refill of coffee?’ Jill said sweetly.

  Coles didn’t want another coffee and she was sure Lundy didn’t either but she kept quiet, silently urging Jill to continue talking.

  ‘He’s very sensitive you know is Pa. He’s so very upset about all of this. You know he always thinks the best about people. But that Paul Yeats got under his skin. Pa just loves Jens and Holmer. We both do. How are the poor little mites? Where are they?’

  ‘Right now they’re with Paul Yeats’ mother,’ Coles replied. ‘The social worker stayed with them for a good few hours before reporting that they were perfectly happy with their granny. They don’t fully realise what has happened yet.’

  ‘Probably won’t for quite a while. Goodness, I hope it doesn’t upset them, you know, in the long term. There are so many people going around these days who are just sick in the head. That’s the only way I can describe it. I know it’s an illness, but it’s an illness they have in their brain. Perhaps when these people were growing up, well, maybe…if they had been better looked after, more loved, they wouldn’t have turned out that way. That’s all I’m saying. I’m sure they’ll be fine just as long as Victoria doesn’t get them. Just as long as she’s not involved in anything related to Esther. Esther couldn’t abide her, you know. I’m talking about Tor Lucas. Why couldn’t she be like everyone else and call herself as she was christened, Victoria. Or even Vickie. But “Tor”! I ask you. Thinks she’s better than the rest of us, that’s what.’

  ‘Did Paul Yeats play with his kids when he was here on Saturday?’ Coles asked.

  Jill Beck laughed.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding. He wouldn’t know how to. They weren’t old enough to be any amusement to him yet. It was funny, though, to see Holmer and his dad together. Holmer would immediately adopt that quiet, withdrawn look Paul had perfected over the years. But the moment his dad was gone he’d snap out of it and be back to being a fun child. Bit worrying that, if you ask me,’ Jill said downheartedly.

  ‘So, he wasn’t alone with the children? Coles affirmed quietly.

  ‘No, he’d no time for his kids on Saturday or any other day. He spent most of the time pestering Esther,’ Jill replied.

  ‘So, did you hear what they were talking about?’ Coles asked.

  ‘Not really. He was always on at her, trying to get her to do something she didn’t want to do,’ Jill said briskly. It was incredible how fluent her conversation had become without Jim around to start or finish her sentences.

  ‘Like…for instance?’ Coles asked. Lundy sat, pen poised at the ready, willing to record her responses.

  ‘Oh, lots of things, like letting Tor manage both of them; like giving him some of her hard-earned cash. For heaven’s sake, she was living in a small flat with her children and supporting them on her own and he was always sticking his hand out, hitting her for a sub,’ Ma Beck answered, just as Pa Beck returned to the room, tray in hand.

  ‘You’re not still talking about Paul Yeats, are you?’ Jim said, gingerly lowering the tray on to the table.

  ‘Afraid so,’ Coles admitted, with a shrug. ‘I know you’ve told me how they normally behaved, but when they came over last Saturday, did they speak to each other in front of you?’

  ‘No, they didn’t. Did they, Pa?’

  ‘No they went into the kitchen by themselves.’

  ‘Were they there long?’ Lundy ventured, his first question for quite a time.

  ‘Maybe ten minutes or so,’ Jill said.

  ‘Yes, no more than ten minutes,’ Jim confirmed.

  ‘How were they when they returned to the room?’ Coles asked.

  ‘Well, he didn’t come back in…’ Jill started.

  ‘…He let himself out the front door,’ Jim completed.

  ‘How did she seem when she returned?’ Coles asked. She couldn’t help hoping that they were on the brink of uncovering some vital piece of information.

  ‘Disturbed and concerned,’ Ma Beck replied.

  Pa smiled. ‘Obviously not something I would have picked up on.’

  Ma smiled meekly as if to say: men, they’re just not with it.

  ‘Did Esther and the children stay the night?’ Coles fished again, hoping for something – anything would do at this stage.

  ‘The kids stayed…’ Jim continued.

  ‘Esther left about an hour after Paul,’ Jill continued further.

  ‘She returned before midday on Sunday to pick up the kids,’ Jim offered.

  ‘Wasn’t here but a few minutes. She didn’t stop, just whisked them off.’

  ‘So, you didn’t see her again?’

  ‘No. Sadly not,’ Jill said, ever so quietly.

  ‘What about Paul Yeats?’ Lundy enquired, attempting to keep Ma Beck away from her darker thoughts.

  ‘Well, funny enough he called back here late on Sunday, looking for Esther’s car keys,’ Ma said.

  ‘She’s got this clapped-out Morris Minor Traveller,’ Pa said.

  ‘The one with the wooden frame,’ Ma said.

  ‘And it works about one time in ten,’ Pa said.

  ‘It’s still outside so it must’ve not started for her. He came around here about eightish,’ Ma said.

  ‘To see if Esther had left the keys here,’ Pa said.

  We told him, no,’ Ma said.

  ‘Even if they were we wouldn’t have given them to him,’ Pa said.

  ‘Pa kept him standing on the doorstep,’ Ma said.

  ‘If I had my way, I’d never have allowed him inside the door, no way,’ Pa said.

  ‘He walked away, no warmth from that man. He walked away, hands deep in pockets, staring at his shoes,’ Ma said.

  ‘Well,’ said Coles, ‘thank you. Very illuminating. We’ll be off now.’

  Lundy was in such a hurry to get out, he nearly tripped over himself. He hastily shoved his notebook into his pocket, crumpling the pages, and he nearly stabbed himself as he tried to put his pen into his top pocket.

  Coles wondered whether the Ma and Pa, carpet-slippers-and-pipe life was so distant from Lundy’s current life that he was offended by it. Or was he merely dreading the inevitability of old age?

  Chapter 19

  Thursday’s Child

  Thursday 21st December

  I’M WRITING in my study and I can hear Dillon outside the door. I keep thinking she could be the sort of person who lingers outside doors with a tape recorder, hoping to capture me singing my songs. If that’s so, she could play the songs back to her friends. I’m not entirely sure I like her. Jens and Holmer do, though. I think it’s funny they like her. Mind you they say they like her; they never say they love her. How do they know the difference? Do they know the difference?

  I have to assume that because they like her, she has never mistreated them. I suppose we can’t help but be worried about our children, after the stories of nannies murdering children in their care. Do children grow up thinking that adults – yes, even their parents – are going to treat them badly? Sometimes I think so. When children look at you and you are not doing what they want you to do or if they are not doing what you want them to do, the look in their little eyes is so unforgiving. As if to say, ‘I expected no
more from you.’

  And the other thing is that with all her extra weight, Dillon will appear cuddly to them. Like Pooh Bear’s mother, but with not quite as good a dress sense as Pooh Bear. Whereas Pooh loves his honey, Dillon loves her sugar, in the shape of candy bars. Any candy bar, all candy bars. Is that her love? Is sugar her healer? You see we all need something and before we can afford to lose that something we have to substitute it with something else. In my case, by the time Yeatsie went off, I was addicted to Jens and Holmer. So, if she had to, what would Dillon willingly substitute for her sugar? Her books? My looks? God how vain of me, I meant to write ‘my books?’.

  And what would she do in-between? I mean in that gap, say between giving up sugar for the love of a man or a woman. Let’s assume she’d first have to lose weight to attract a partner. She’d have to give up sugar for – shall we say, three months? – before she went out to find a man (or woman). With Dillon I really don’t know which. What would she use as a crutch during this time? Or would it happen another way? Could she find someone to love her as she is? I often think that her fondness for food is also her excuse. ‘I don’t have a man because I’m so overweight,’ therefore, ‘I have an excuse for not having a man’.

  Friends can be so unintentionally cruel to their partnerless friends. For some reason people in relationships feel compelled to match up the solo members of the community. It’s like, if we haven’t escaped, why should you? Or something. I know, I’ve been that warrior. I’ve been that interesting solo female strategically placed beside the solo interesting man at a dinner party. If you were a car without petrol the joint mental energy of all the other people at the table willing you together would push the car with the couple in it up Primrose Hill. But either one or both of them have been to the movie before, and whereas when we were younger we would gladly have taken a chance, now all our prejudices instinctively cut off any potential relationship at the pass. Give yourself one excuse not to go ahead, that’s all you need, one simple little excuse. And, if you can’t find that excuse, you can bet your bottom dollar he will. I still think of income in dollars: advances, royalty cheques, gifts from mother (ha!), whatever. If they’re in pounds, I will translate them into dollars. Expenses, on the other hand, I see in pounds. Perhaps that’s why I’m not well off as I should be.

  But back to Dillon: do her friends leave her alone at this stage? Does she have any friends? She behaves weirdly sometimes. Last week I caught her standing outside her Mini Minor, talking to it. She was there for ages. When I saw her at first, from my living room window, I thought she was talking to someone across the street or on my blind side. But I couldn’t see or hear anyone. Then I went to the door. I opened it a little, so that she wouldn’t see me and I swear I saw her talking to her car. Probably trying to coax it into letting her climb on board. The kids call her car ‘Tigger’ and I never know whether they are laughing at the chug-chugging of the car, the fact that it’s continuously lopsided, or the ritual she has to go through to climb on board. But all of that paled into insignificance when I saw her talking to her car. Who would talk to a car? And why?

  Eventually I had to go outside and ask her if everything was okay. She said it was, and got in (eventually) and drove off, huffing and puffing, like she does when she’s under pressure. I can hear her breathing now outside my door. It’s more like wheezing than breathing and she must know I can hear her. Perhaps she’s lived with her wheeze for so long she can’t hear it any more. But I can hear it clearly. I am writing this to her ‘beat’. Breathe, one, two, three, four. Breathe, one, two, three, four. What is she doing out there? Maybe she’s doing nothing, just listening to me. If I wasn’t writing this I’d probably be scared, because you have to admit, it’s quite spooky behaviour.

  She’s quite spooky a lot of the time. I’ll catch her standing at my bedroom door. Just standing there looking in the room, taking in everything. Is she imaging what I do in my bed – and I don’t mean sleeping and daydreaming? My bed doesn’t have many stories to tell, but I do love it. Dillon’s like a fan, you know. That’s it! She behaves like you’d imagine a fan that’s broken into your flat would behave. They’d sneak around, drinking in everything for the hit of just being there; then they’d go and swap the experience with another fan. The swap might involve what looks to you and me (whomever you are, dear reader) like a plain white piece of paper but in reality, I’m assured, is a signed Japanese limited edition CD jacket with luminous ink you can only read when you’ve got a UV light. Pretty abstract, a bit like a Canadian art-house movie.

  No fan that I know (except Josef) has experienced my home, so how would the other fans know if Dillon is telling the truth? Not unless she takes things, things like pillowcases, sheets, some of my rubbish? Aggghh, even the thought grosses me out. But I understand from Yeatsie that weirder things have been swapped. As gross as you want to think – now hold that thought – because, according to Yeatsie, it’s been swapped.

  Mind you, at least fans claim to like the music (my music), but I get the feeling the same people are waiting outside the stage door every night saying the same things to different artists. You know, just like it’s their job. Their job to get an autograph, and the harder the autograph is to get, the more they want it. They have their little tricks, too. If you don’t feel like signing all this weird memorabilia they seem to find, one of them will shout at you, but mainly for the benefit of the waiting journalist and photographers: ‘Oh, too big to sign for the poor fans who supported you all these years and got you to where you are now’. It’s bad, I know, but then I usually smile, take his photograph or whatever, and write ‘I wasn’t here’ on it and leave it unsigned. By the time he works out what I’ve written, I’m gone. Yeatsie says that the best way to defuse these situations is to scribble anything, give them their quick photograph opportunity. Then you’re done, you’re outta there, no negative energy. He also says that someday you’ll be happy to have someone to ask you for an autograph.

  I remind him that Mark Chapman asked for John Lennon’s autograph just before he shot him!

  Dillon, even Yeatsie calls her the ‘nanny from hell’, lurks around giving off a kind of Chapman vibe. Or am I just being stupid now? She really does spook me, though.

  *

  Kennedy and Coles completed their respective interviews around the same time – shortly after three p.m. – and went together to visit the nanny. This hadn’t happened by chance, the ever-efficient James Irvine having fitted it into the interview timetable. For her part, Anne Coles would happily have slipped Irvine a fiver, as she treasured the time she and Kennedy spent together professionally.

  ‘We’re ahead of schedule,’ Kennedy said as they exited North Bridge House, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m famished. Fancy a quick bite for lunch?’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ Coles replied. She was conscious, probably because she was nervous, that she might have sounded flippant. Why, she thought, do I always behave like a schoolgirl around this man? She was convinced that were anything ever to develop between them, she’d be able to handle it. But as soon as she’d have such a thought, she’d give herself a hard time. He’s your boss, she’d say to herself. For heaven’s sake, forget it. It’s never going to happen.

  Even that was a cop-out, she knew. She was making the assumption that if he wasn’t her boss he’d be interested in her. Wrong. Kennedy’s type, if Kennedy did in fact have type, would always be of the ann rea variety; a dark and troubled soul. But why should ann rea be dark and troubled? She was certainly beautiful, definitely intelligent, and she must have something major going for her to have Kennedy still interested in her years down the line. Recently there seemed to be a bit of a problem between them, Coles noted. Just little things that were said and done and little hints that were dropped. In fact, at one point, Coles was convinced that her superior and his journalist girlfriend had split up. Worse than that, Coles was equally convinced that on one occasion, when Irvine had said something about Kennedy and an
n rea going out together again, she had let down her guard and shown her disappointment. If Irvine had picked up on it, as Coles figured he must have, he’d been too much of a gentleman to comment.

  Coles also liked Irvine, but not in the same way she liked Kennedy. With Irvine it was more as a mate. She liked him, she trusted him, and he’d never tried anything on with her. He certainly had an eye for the women and appeared to be incredibly successful with them, but from the little they’d talked about it together, it seemed he always lost interest the minute they said yes. Anne Coles had been too much of a lady to enquire as to what exactly the host of girls had been saying ‘yes!’ to.

  But this daydream was about her and Kennedy, and as they walked down Parkway together she let her mind race through all the possibilities. Her next train of thought was: even if this man is attracted to me, why would he want to consider being unprofessional? Of course, part of his attraction was his professionalism, the fact that he’d never come on to a member of the team. Therein lay the consistency. Coles thought he was absolutely gorgeous. He wasn’t an ounce overweight, he had such kind hands, such soulful eyes, such a gentle voice, sharp features, lovely hair… Oh for heaven’s sake, stop this rubbish!, the sensible part of her brain interrupted. It’s never going to happen, the romantic part of her brain cut in. Would I be disappointed in him if he did ask me out?

  ‘So,’ Kennedy said, interrupting her thought process, ‘what are you so deep in thought about?’ They had just passed the off-licence, and a few spits of rain had started to fall.

  ‘Sorry?’ Coles replied, thinking, (a) I hope I’m not blushing, and (b) my hair is going to look a mess if this rain continues. She was forever giving herself a hard time. Her blonde hair was either too long or too short, it never seemed just the right length. Legs a bit too fat, she presumed, for the rest of her body, and she swam for forty minutes every day as a corrective measure. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She swam every day because she enjoyed it, enjoyed the exercise. The fact it might be keeping her trim was a bonus. The main thing she absolutely adored was the feeling of tranquillity, the tuning out of the rest of the world during her thirty-four lengths.