by Clare Curzon
The tea arrived, two mugs with floating tea-bags and the milk already added. Carrying the box and with the discarded jacket nonchalantly over one shoulder, he trailed after her into the enormous lounge with the observation window. On the way he took note of the weird pictures on the walls. There’d been a short period at school when he’d been interested in art and joined the groups visiting London galleries. He thought now he recognized a kneeling Modigliani nude, or something a bit like it. There was also a small canvas pulsating with colour and roughly signed ‘Vincent’. It seemed incredible that there should be genuine modern masters hanging in a private home in this pedestrian Thames Valley town. But the old bird who was dying was reputedly also extremely rich, so she’d hardly be satisfied with prints.
No use expecting enlightenment from Sheena. She was so ignorant and uncouth she’d not bothered to set out the cakes on a proper dish. He walked across to take in the view over the town and the distant rolling hills. Strange to be here where Dr Stanford’s woman had stood watching for the last sight of him. Then he’d been the outsider, barely able to see in. Now, briefly, he was inside, commanding this amazing view; a reversal of circumstances symbolic of the way his fortunes were changing. The thought brought a wild surge of euphoria.
He reached out to touch the window. No slightest whisper of the half-gale blowing outside. Just sheets of toughened glass that isolated one sort of world from another: the haves from the have-nots. He knew which of those worlds he wanted and the need had become suddenly urgent.
He looked back at the Lump and his mouth twisted with distaste. He walked across and slumped into an easy chair beside her while she cut the string, opened the box and cooed over the contents. ‘Ooh, loverly!’ she crowed, and batted her short, sandy eyelashes at him. She reached for an eclair from the box and stuffed one end in her mouth, sucked at the cream-oozing pastry, eyes half-closed in bliss. He watched the pink, moist lips pucker and close around her prey; suck sensually at the gleaming chocolate.
The three remaining eclairs lay, phallic but flaccid, waiting to be gorged.
With a start Markham felt his own crotch respond, his prick harden, start to engorge.
He reached a hand in his jacket pocket for the half-bottle of scotch he’d meant for a celebration at home.
Stuffed full of cream and chocolate she’d be halfway there, then a tot or two and she’d go all giggly and girlish when he started, but stuff that. It was an age since the last time, the unsatisfying humping of a London slag picked up near King’s Cross station.
He drank off half the tea in the mug she’d pushed across to him, refilled it from hers, spilling tea on the black wood of the low table, and made good her loss with whisky. ‘Something to jizz it up,’ he offered.
She grinned back with cream all over her mouth, and showed off by draining it in one go.
He leaned close, resting his chin on her shoulder, and slid an urgent hand up her skirt.
Chapter Ten
Next morning Ramón was buzzed in at eight-thirty on the dot, was shown where to hang his coat and followed Alyson into the kitchen for instructions. His white jacket was scrupulously starched and pressed, his fingernails short and white-rimmed. Alyson explained that Emily had already been washed and was sitting out for the bed to be changed. They should do that together.
Ramón followed her instructions deftly and lifted Emily back in, settling her against her heaped pillows. His movements were smooth, almost catlike.
‘She’ll be hungry,’ Alyson said. ‘I’d like you to reheat her puree and help her eat it. She finds a spoon difficult but it’s important she tries for herself.’
That too went well. The man seemed familiar with a microwave oven and handled things in the fridge carefully. She explained how the purees were prepared and took him through the written timetable.
‘She doesn’t require a lot of entertainment. I talk to her but there isn’t much response. She has music CDs already set up. She simply has to press a button on her control board. Same thing if she rings for attention. Apart from that you’ll find she sleeps quite a lot.
‘You wouldn’t be expected to do any housework, just load the dishwasher and see to the laundry. Normally we do it here but the tumble dryer’s waiting to be serviced, so perhaps you’d drop her bedding off at the 24-hour launderette when you leave. Sheena or I will pick up yesterday’s later.’
He gave his oriental smile and nodded.
‘Then I think it’s coffee time.’
‘I make it,’ he offered and went unerringly to the right cupboard. She watched as he ground the beans and prepared the cafetière, ignoring the jar of instant. None of Sheena’s shortcuts. He seemed almost too good to be true.
Over coffee she was able to draw him out a little. He’d worked in Hong Kong and Singapore, but came originally from the Philippines, where his parents, both killed in the insurgent uprisings, had been doctors.
There was enough truth in it to satisfy them both. No need to explain that he remembered little of his real family who had been simple fishermen. Nor that, kidnapped as a nine-year-old, he’d lived for five years with rebels, raiding other islands and slicing throats as a way of life. When the Marcos soldiers overran their camp it was the doctors who rescued him from the bloodshed, took him to Manila, taught him civilized ways and employed him as their house-boy.
He was used to giving the sanitized edition. The full story was not for sensitive Western ears which knew nothing of violence and could not understand the imperatives of survival.
There was enough grimness in what he did reveal to keep Alyson from probing deeper. She satisfied herself that he could relieve her for the first part of her night shift with Emily on Sunday, from eight until midnight. She would ring in from ITU to check that he’d taken over from Sheena, then change at the hospital and go out to join Keith in the car park. There was no escaping a slight sense of duplicity in that, but she must be discreet for Keith’s sake. And it wasn’t as though she intended anything really underhand.
Ramón left at 11.40 with the bag of washing, in time to open the bar, and give one of the hotel’s chambermaids a couple of quid to drop the stuff off at the launderette. He was pleased with the arrangements for Sunday, his free night, but it must be a one-off. He couldn’t afford temping as a care assistant if it interfered with his job at the Crown.
Keith had dropped in to see Emily as Ramón was about to leave, and Alyson introduced them, aware of the way each was sizing up the other. It was Ramón whose eyes dropped first.
If Keith hadn’t reminded her about the promised dinner she would have fought shy of bringing up the subject. ‘I can get cover on Sunday evening,’ she told him, ‘if that would suit you.’ His face told her the answer.
‘Shall I pick you up here?’
‘Could we meet in the hospital car park? I’ll try to be there soon after eight.’
‘Splendid. I’ll book a table for nine.’
He found Emily quite chirpy. ‘Visitors’ day,’ she said with her little twisted smile. Wryly Alyson thought it made her sound like a prisoner.
‘You’ve done well lately for visitors, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘Rachel your granddaughter, Ramón who’ll look after you, and now your favourite doctor.’
‘What did you make of the granddaughter?’ Keith asked when they were again in the hall.
‘I’d like notice of that,’ Alyson said shortly. ‘Sheena thought she might have been given the electronic code to get in, because she didn’t use the downstairs buzzer. I don’t like the idea that anyone can come up here unannounced.’
‘If you think Mr Fitt gave it to her you should ring and tell him it’s inappropriate.’
‘Yes, I’d half decided to do that.’
‘Decide fully, then. Security is essential. Emily might well get upset, from what I’ve picked up of that family.’
‘It’s my family too, remember.’ She spoke lightly as though he was taking the matter too seriously.
‘You k
now I don’t include you. But do it now. Leave it another half-hour and Fitt could be out to lunch.’
She phoned from the hall, conscious of him watching her closely as she waited for the connection. ‘Miss – er, Orme,’ the solicitor greeted her. ‘How can I be of help?’
He listened while she explained her uneasiness. There was a short silence, then his voice came back brusquely. ‘I certainly have had no reason to impart the code to anyone. The number is kept in Miss Withers’ safety deposit box at the bank. Nor has anyone had access to it. Unless, perhaps, for your helpers’ convenience, you thought fit …?’
‘No,’ she said crisply. ‘Dr Stanford and I are the only ones needing to know, because there’s always someone on duty to let the other in.’
‘In which case perhaps you will find that Miss Howard was let in by another resident who was using the outer door. However, I will point out to – er, the family that if they wish to visit, it must be by previous appointment made through me. Perhaps that will set your mind at rest.’
‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Mr Fitt. Thank you.’
She said goodbye, laid down the phone and explained the solicitor’s offer. ‘He’ll think I’m just fussing.’
‘Not at all,’ Keith told her. ‘It’s not only Emily who’s vulnerable here. He rightly feels responsible for the whole setup. God only knows what could happen if the wrong sort of people got in.’
Sheena, surprisingly, arrived early. Her face appeared puffy and red. Alyson hoped she wasn’t about to go down with a cold. She watched as the care assistant peeled off her coat and rolled up the sleeves of her thick sweater in response to the flat’s artificial warmth. As she surveyed the fridge’s offerings Alyson noticed dark bruises on her lower arms.
‘Are you feeling all right, Sheena?’ she asked.
‘Sure. Never better.’ She put a hand to one cheek. ‘Just a bit of stubble trouble from the boyfriend.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘You know how it is.’ Meaning slyly that Alyson wouldn’t. Opportunity was a fine thing.
‘Right. I’ll be off then.’ She wasn’t going to get drawn into listening to a blow by blow account of how Sheena had spent the intervening hours. Each to her own taste.
DS Rosemary Zyczynski carried her tray across the canteen and hovered over a table where two of the drugs squad were halfway through their main course. ‘Can I join you?’
‘Provided you don’t chomp too loud,’ said the man, a sergeant.
‘Sure, me love,’ said the woman, clearing her bulging shoulder-bag on to the seat beside her. ‘How’s Major Crimes these days?’
‘Keeping us busy.’ Z emptied her tray on to the table, conscious of them examining her choice.
‘The chicken’s all bones,’ warned Terry.
‘That’s the way they’re made nowadays. I can take it. Actually it’s your brains I really want to pick.’
‘Like wow,’ said Moura, impressed.
‘There’s a youngster in ITU at the hospital, a crack OD, can’t be more than sixteen, and I’d like to find out his name. They haven’t got a word out of him yet, which makes me think he isn’t local and his accent could give him away. He’s small; skinny as this chicken; dark, curly hair that might have had a decent cut a couple of months back; no body-piercings that I could see; blue eyes; eyelashes a Hollywood starlet would die for. Possibly homeless.’
‘Could be any mug our clients deal to.’ Sergeant Ross wasn’t interested.
‘Blue eyes and black hair,’ Moira said thoughtfully, ‘and possibly living rough. Which nobody’d want to in this weather. There’s a little kid I’ve seen hanging about the Hollingworth Estate. Cheeky little runt, but I wouldn’t say streetwise.’
‘One of a gang?’ Z asked hopefully.
‘More of a natural loner, but he does mix. If anything I’d say the other lads over there have a healthy respect for him. They don’t take liberties, for all he’s a midget.’
‘The one in ITU is certainly tough, the way he’s hanging on. And staying desperately stumm. The nurses doubted at first he would pull through.’
‘Tell you what,’ Moura offered. ‘There’s a lad who just might open up about him. Geordie Moffat. He owes me one for doing a blind Nelson. I’ll have a word. Ring you back, OK?’
‘Stand you both a pint,’ Z said, grinning. ‘When you deliver, that is.’
Oliver Markham went across to the court buildings to clear his locker and deliver his formal notice pecked out on an old typewriter he’d adopted after computers took over there like an army of Daleks. He was supposed to give a month’s notice but was content to lose out on wages provided he didn’t have to turn up again. Let the housewives take over, scuttling about like clockwork mice, dealing out the wrong forms, sucking up to the Justices. He’d gone on to better things.
Now that his whole life had turned round he couldn’t believe he’d been grinding on so long at the same old routine, with the same sour old faces, same stenchy drunks and car thieves and wife-beaters turning up time and time again. Sodding wankers who messed their shitty little lives; leeched on social services; made the state and the county and the dumb tax-payers shell out to provide a system that continually recycled the same sick parasites between street and dock and prison ad nauseam. And he’d been in their service!
Goodbye to all that. His new freedom meant he’d be paying back the feckless, dealing direct, hitting them where it hurt most - in material possessions which they wrongly considered theirs. Now they should see where it all led, as the bailiffs’ men carried off the goods they’d conned and lied and thieved to make their own. Even the prospect gave him a sense of achievement.
Not least significant among yesterday’s winnings was the matter of the penthouse. He’d gained entry to more than a rich woman’s apartment. Driven first by a minor itch of curiosity, where had it led him? A sweat broke out and he felt blood flood his face at recall of violent sex on the polished wood floor, with the Lump struggling under him, batting him off and then suddenly rising to the force of nature, yielding, clamping her thick thighs about his heaving shanks, panting and clawing at him as if she’d suck in the whole of him in one go.
Proof, if ever needed, that when a woman said no she meant yes-yes-and-more-more-more! He’d given her plenty to remember him by. She’d not need persuading next time.
The new freedom didn’t mean he’d escaped the inevitable hangover. His head felt like a football after a particularly aggressive game against Wycombe Wanderers. And there were some bad vibes mixed in with the smug sense of achievement. He’d slept fitfully, confused by flashes from the past, his first stolen sight of his father slamming the Slut against the passage wall and tearing off her knickers; the sound of their panting and groans as they abused each other. He’d watched, appalled, from between the banisters on the stairs, vowing it would never happen to him.
He shuddered. What he needed was a hair of the dog, but it was too early to be caught slinking into a pub, and there were no off-licences left in the High Street. There used to be three, but the supermarkets had killed them off. Now it was all house agents, hair stylists and no less than five charity shops. Booze was collected by housewives these days, along with their groceries, Harry Potters, nylons and tampons, from Sainsbury’s or Tesco. Then doubtless doled out in whatever measures they thought fit for their menfolk. Bloody feminist invasion taking over the world.
Superintendent Mike Yeadings contemplated his paper-strewn desk. Hadn’t the advent of computers promised to save the rain forests? Instead they spewed printouts with the velocity of a stuttering machine gun. There’d been a couple of days’ respite when he’d almost caught up, then in quick succession an aggravated burglary, a possible suicide, and two suspicious deaths had showered on the team.
DI Salmon, still suffering the after effects of an infected lower jaw, was even more surly and unresponsive than usual. Apart from him, there was team gloom because Angus Mott, briefly glimpsed for his wedding to Paula, had taken only a three-day honeymoon a
nd then returned to duties in Kosovo. There was zilch hope of his joining them for another eight months at least. Even then, Yeadings regretted, Angus would get promotion, which must mean a sideways move into uniform.
The radiator belched and in counterpoint someone rapped on his door. He barked out, ‘Come,’ and DS Beamont slid into the room, snow fresh on his shoulders like a bad case of dandruff. ‘Had to leg it from the morgue,’ he complained. ‘Ruddy car wouldn’t start. I’ve had to send DC Silver over with some leads.’
‘Leave the lights on, did you?’ Yeadings inquired with exasperating mildness.
‘Got flagged down by a ruddy car park attendant at the hospital. Their ticket machines have seized up and he’s demanding money with menaces.’
Enough to get Beaumont’s quick temper up, Yeadings guessed. He’d have stormed off without a backward glance and the attendant would have paid back his rudeness by omitting to draw his attention to the lights.
‘So, what of the post mortem? Does Littlejohn go along with suicide?’
‘Looks like it so far, unless anything exotic turns up from toxicology. Most of the stuff already recognized could be obtained over the counter.’
‘In the quantity required?’
‘She could have gone on a suicide shopping spree. There are chemists enough in town to spread the order.’
‘Visit them with her photo. Get times and dates. We don’t want to make a mistake here. Then consult with Z. She’s dealing with the family background.’
In his overheated office Timothy Fitt looked over his half-moon glasses at his secretary as she presented the correspondence for his signature. ‘Thank you, Miss Philpot. Just leave it and I’ll – er, run through it.’
