The Day She Died: A Novel

by Catriona McPherson

  “If anyone knows him, they’re keeping quiet about it,” said McDowall. “Thank you for your time, ladies.” He followed Anderson back to the front door then turned. “Czerwinska, eh?”

  And now, too late, I saw that I had really blown it. I had given the coppers Ros’s name. Ros, who worked on the caravan site where a guy was hiding who had the same coat as the guy in the river and had the guy’s Bible and his rosary too and a ton of dodgy money, and I had hidden him. And if the cops asked me why, I’d have nothing to say.

  I had to find Kazek and get rid of him before they came round to interview Gizzy or one of the proper caravan people saw him and freaked. And now I had to tell him that, as well as Ros taking off, his other friend had drowned. Unless he knew? Was that why he had come to Becky’s house looking for Ros that Tuesday evening? Was that why he was so scared?

  But if I sent Kazek away, I’d never find him again, and he was the link to Ros, and Ros was the link to Becky, and Becky was the thing I couldn’t let go. Who she really was, why she really died.

  And then I thought of the answer and couldn’t believe it had taken so long. Stupid me.

  The day couldn’t go quick enough after that. Dot listened to the local news at noon and came back to the office with her eyes out on stops.

  “He didn’t drown,” she said. “I’ve just heard it on the radio. Oh Jessie, his throat was cut. He was dead before he ever went in.”

  I sat back and stared at her.

  “They’ve just released the information,” she said.

  She looked down and when she looked up again there were pink spots in the middle of her cheeks. “Jessie,” she said. “Why didn’t you say he had drowned?”

  “You’re kidding?” I said. “You think I knew him?”

  “You don’t know Polish,” she said.

  “I said died because—you’d know this if you ever listened to Steve—it’s more respectful. Death is equal, whether you slip away in your own bed or misjudge your auto-erotic asphyxiation.”

  “Jessie!”

  “You asked.”

  We glared at each other for a bit.

  “How would it be with you if I left early?” I said. “The cops were right about one thing, Dot. My friend’s wife really did die last week and he really does need me.”

  She turned and left again and I just barely heard the words as she was leaving. “The end of days.”

  Gus was in the cottage when I got there. Only three o’clock but the fire was lit and there was a beer on the arm of his chair and a Daily Record open on the coffee table. Dillon was asleep on the couch and Ruby was colouring in at the table.

  He had met me at the door. He’d almost seemed to block my way for a minute, but it was probably my imagination.

  “I thought you’d still be at the workshop,” I said. He rubbed a finger along his jaw and then I got it. He was embarrassed at me catching him. “Good to see you taking it easy,” I said and I gave him a quick squeeze. “And what are you making pictures of, sweetie?” I asked Ruby, leaning over her.

  “Mummy in heaven,” said Ruby. Becky had wings and a long white dress; only her dark hair—two strips of black crayon down each side of her head—stopped her looking like a standard-issue angel. “Only but how do you draw a white cloud on white paper, Jessie?” Becky in the picture was suspended in the middle of empty space like those daft pictures of the ascension. I turned to Gus.

  “Daddy’s the artist,” I said. He looked back at me, unsmiling. Was that another insult, thinking he could paint angel pictures? Or was it just thoughtless to imagine him drawing his dead wife? I turned back to Ruby. “Here’s how,” I said. “I’ll do a cloud shape and you colour outside it with blue to make the sky.”

  She frowned at the picture and then at me. So I showed her. Drawing the puffy cushion for Becky to balance on, then filling in round it. I made another cloud in the background.

  “Who’s that for?” said Ruby.

  “Granddad?” I said.

  “Mummy doesn’t like Granddad,” Ruby told me. “Ros could live there.” It was only a picture. So I said nothing, but I didn’t dare catch Gus’s eye. I went into the kitchen and called to him from there.

  “I need to check in with Gizzy,” I said. “Then I might need to run into town for her. Is it okay if I use the car? Oh!” He was right there beside me.

  “I can’t face the workshop,” he said. “It feels like it’s all gone … it just doesn’t feel right anymore.” I nodded, but I couldn’t stop the thought: Good, you thought of a way to account for just lolling about in the middle of the day. He sat down at the table. He had this way of sitting that was a sort of a collapse but with a real force behind it so the chair legs grated over the lino. I could see from the marks on the floor that he must do it all the time.

  “Can I talk to you?” he said. I looked at my watch and out of the window at the failing light. Even if the police decided to follow up on Ros and they got onto to Gizzy tonight, why would they go searching round caravans in the dark? If one of the holiday people was going to see Kazek, it would be in the daytime when they were out and about, not at night once they were huddled round their eight-inch tellies or their Scrabble boards.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “I can’t face working on the piece,” he said. “But I can’t face the thought of all the work that’s wasted if I don’t finish it either.”

  “Just take a break,” I told him. “Of course you don’t feel like working just now. You’ve not even had the funeral.”

  “But I’ll go mad if I sit and do nothing.”

  “Okay, well how about this?” I said. “That woman copper didn’t agree, but I think you need to track down Ros. You need to ask her if she knows why Becky did what she did. If she wasn’t pregnant, why did she tell you she was? And here’s another thing—maybe Ros would want to come to her funeral.”

  He didn’t speak.

  “I’m pretty sure the cops aren’t going to lift a finger even though I’ve given them her name twice now. But maybe there’s something here in the house—something with some information about her. She was Becky’s best friend.” And then I had a brainwave. “Or maybe she left something behind in her digs. I’ll ask Gizzy.”

  “You gave the cops her full name?” said Gus.

  “Not that they were bothered.”

  “How did you know her full name?”

  I must have looked like a goldfish, mouth opening and shutting, nothing coming out. “I don’t know,” I said, slowly. “How did I find out her second name? You know how that can happen? You know something but you can’t remember how you learned it?”

  He stood up suddenly, came over, and put his arms around me. “It’s doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’re right. I need to forget work for a while, and maybe finding Ros would be a good idea. She’s bound to know something.”

  “Ruby told me,” I said, too late to be any good. “She knows her name. She knows quite a lot of Polish, as it happens.”

  Gus swung me back and forward, still smiling down at me. “God, you’ve really fallen for Ruby’s routine? What makes you think it’s Polish she’s talking and not just mince?”

  I knew it was really Polish, I thought, because Kazek understood it, but I didn’t tell that to Gus. I just repeated my story about running into town and went on my way.

  How the hell was I going to tell Kazek the news about the Bible guy? The drowned guy, I would have to remember to stop calling him, now I knew. I still hadn’t come up with an opener by the time I got to Foxleap, but I knocked anyway. Kazek opened the door a crack.

  “Jaroslawa?” he said.

  “I’m bloody sick of being a stand-in for Becky with Gus and a stand-in for Ros with you,” I said.

  “Jessie-Pleasie,” he answered, opening wide enough to let me in.

  “Okay, Kazek?” I sa
id, taking his hands in mine. He sobered and his eyes were alive with worry. “Your friend.” I pointed to the Bible that was lying on the coffee table.

  “Wojtek?”

  “He’s dead.”

  He shut his eyes and let his breath go very slowly, then he shook his head once and opened his eyes again to look at me. There were tears there, but he wasn’t reeling. He could take more.

  “Murdered,” I said. I drew a finger across my neck and made the sound. “And then,” I had to let go of his hands completely to mime heaving a body into a water—“Splash!”—and I showed him the paper I had brought with me. The picture of the frogmen hunting in the river said it all.

  He nodded. The tears didn’t fall, no more following to push them down his cheeks. He wiped them away.

  “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  “Now,” I said. “The police?”

  “No!” Even with the windows shut, it was too loud a sound to come from an empty caravan. We both winced.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “But I need to get you out of here. Pack up your stuff and come with me.” I mimed walking away, both of us, with my fingers.

  “Police?” he said, hanging back.

  “No. I promise.” For the second time that day, I did something I never thought I’d do again after I left my mother’s house. This time, it was a Bible. I put my hand flat on the cover. “No police,” I told him. So he hopped up on the kitchen worktop, got his packet of money down from its hidey-place, and we went on our way.

  In the car I explained it, even though I knew he wouldn’t understand.

  “Gus needs to understand why Becky died,” I said. He nodded. He knew two of those names, and he knew what died was. “I think Ros knows something. It’s too much of a coincidence that Ros left and then days later Becky was dead. Right?” Another nod, but I knew I’d lost him. “You can help us find people who know Ros. Ros was taking care of you, and I don’t think she’d have left you high and dry. You are in big trouble.”

  “In Little China,” Kazek said again.

  “You didn’t kill your friend, though,” I said, “because if you’ve killed someone you don’t worry about them, and you were really worried about Wojtek. The money looks bad, but on the other hand, if you’ve stolen money, you spend it. So whatever trouble you’re in, it’s not because you’re a thief, right? Even though you really really really don’t want to go to the police.”

  “No, no police,” said Kazek. “Bible, Jessie-Pleasie.”

  “Yes, I know,” I put my hand on his and squeezed it. “For a wee while anyway.” He caught my tone and relaxed again. “But still you’ve got to ask yourself this question, Kazek,” I said. “Why do I trust you? Why am I taking you where I’m taking you? It doesn’t make any sense to me. You’ve done nothing that isn’t dodgy since the first minute I clapped eyes on you and yet I’m acting as if you’re my long-lost brother.”

  Which didn’t mean much. Gus had a long-lost brother and I doubt if he’d do for him what I’d done for Kazek since I’d met him.

  Gus.

  Gus had been kind, more understanding than anyone I’d ever met, great to his kids, give you a lump in your throat to see them together, said he’d fallen in love with me, acted it too, wanted me, seemed to need me, made me laugh. But was it really true that I wanted to find out what had happened with Becky and Ros just to put his mind at rest, or was there a question I needed answered just for me? Did I trust that sweet, good, kind, sad man as much as I trusted this filthy, half-crazy scrap of trouble sitting beside me?

  “You know my problem, Kazek?” I said. “I can’t handle good things happening. Gus looks to good to be true, so obviously I’m going to find something to worry about. That’s just me.” And I ignored the voice inside me—Dot’s voice, as it goes—saying, Too good to be true, eh? And why would that be?

  We were turning off the bypass now, heading towards town and it seemed to me that the closer we got, the less easy Kazek grew. He was sitting forward, staring out of the windscreen. Maybe Dot was right and there really was something rotten in this place now.

  Dumfries is a dead town at night, even without a murder in the news. A couple of clubs, a handful of pubs, no restaurants to speak of really, so once the evening classes chuck out, the suburbs are dead. I wound my way in on empty streets, houses with their curtains drawn, parked cars lining each side of the roads like barricades. I’d never tried to park outside my flat before. It hadn’t occurred to me how there was never a space. And the barrier at the library car park was down, which wasn’t very neighbourly when it was closed for the night anyway. But maybe, I told myself, as we walked back from where we’d had to leave the car, that was a good thing. The road was quiet and the stairway to my flat was quieter still; maybe better that we were quiet too.

  Kazek hesitated at the door, peering into the dark mouth of the passageway.

  “It’s okay,” I said. I held out my hand. “Follow me.”

  Upstairs I opened my door and shoved him in ahead of me. I don’t go in for plants, so it didn’t matter that it was six days since I’d been here. No harm done beyond a scummy tea cup in the sink and a load of wet washing growing black mould in the basket where I’d left it.

  Kazek walked around. The living room cum kitchen was on one side, the bedroom and the bathroom on the other. All tidy enough. Poor-looking though. None of the curtains were the right size for the windows or the right colour for the carpets. And none of the carpets were any colour I’d have chosen. And throws. Throws look great until you sit on them, then they’re just blankets hiding your manky chairs. And you can’t put throws over everything—tables and chests of drawers and that—so they just have to sit there looking like what they are. I looked at the place with visitors’ eyes and with the eyes of someone who’d been in Dave’s House of Vintage Charm for a week, looking out at the sea, looking down at the perfect faces of little children. There was nothing here that looked even half as good as Ruby’s face, not even when it was covered in brown sauce and tripping her. Then, following him round, I looked at it with Kazek’s eyes instead. And all I saw was the double bed and the proper-sized shower. The radiators and the big fridge. The washing machine and the telly.

  “Loads of channels,” I said, showing him the remote. “And you can eat anything you can find. Thank God for super-dooper pasteurised, eh? Milk keeps for months now.” I went back to the bedroom and started putting clothes in a bag. At last! If I never wore this pair of jeans again, it would be soon enough.

  “Your home?” said Kazek from the doorway.

  I nodded. “And here’s the best bit,” I said. I held the phone out to him. “Call Poland. Call anyone. Get it sorted out. Call Ros’s sister, what was her name?”

  He took the phone out of my hand and for a moment I thought he might kiss it or kiss me.

  “And I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said. I tapped my watch. “Five o’clock,” I told him. “Got it? Five.”

  Gus hadn’t asked me why I needed to go back to town. Maybe he thought I meant Gatehouse, didn’t think of Dumfries. He’d know now, from the time and the petrol. But I had my bag of clothes as a cover story. There it was again. I couldn’t tell him about Kazek, and I couldn’t tell myself why that might be.

  He didn’t ask me where I’d been anyway. What he did say drove my troubled thoughts far away.

  “You’re right!” He had opened the door when he heard me. He took the bag out of my hand and put it inside the bedroom doorway then drew me into the living room, to the fireside. “You’re dead right about Ros,” he said. “I called the cops and they’re not interested. But we need to find her.”

  “How can they say they’re not interested?”

  “She took her stuff,” said Gus. “Some of it anyway.”

  “How do they know that? They checked with Gizzy?”

  He shrugged. “Must have. So as far
as they’re concerned, she’s an adult doing what she wants and there’s no problem.” I wasn’t really listening, couldn’t get past the news that the cops had been onto Gizzy so quickly. That they might so easily have decided to check around, and if they’d found me skulking about the caravan site—if it had been Sergeant McDowall anyway—I’d have been done for.

  “So we need to wait for her sister to phone again,” Gus said, “and then put our heads together.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “And don’t tell her the news from Dumfries.”

  He frowned.

  “You didn’t watch the local news today?”

  He shook his head.

  “That drowned guy didn’t drown—his throat was cut. And he was Polish too.”

  “How’d they know that?” said Gus. He seemed to have paled. Why would that be? Well, he’d stood there and watched the frogmen that day. Or maybe he was squeamish about blood and guts and things.

  “It must have been pretty obvious. From the body.”

  “I mean, how’d they know he was Polish? Is he like something to do with Ros or something? Some connection?” He really was a white as a sheet.

  “Charity bangles with Polish writing,” I told him. “The cops came to work with the guy’s clothes to see if maybe we’d provided them. ‘Looked like one of yours,’ the sergeant said. He seemed okay when he was here, eh? But he was dead sour today.”

  “The same cop?” said Gus.

  “Small town.”

  “The same cop that came here brought that drowned guy’s stuff to show you, and you told him Ros was missing?” He seemed really struck by it, like I’d been. Only I knew about Kazek being a link between them. Gus didn’t, so what was his problem?

  “Are you okay?” I said.

  “There’s a lot of Polish folk about,” he said. “There’s no reason at all the cops would connect them.”

  “Why would that matter?” I asked him. “Why would you care if they did or not?”

  He watched me for a long time before he answered. And, when he spoke, it was slow and soft, as if he was trying to hypnotise me.