Mystery Man 04 - The Prisoner of Brenda

by Bateman

  He made a face. ‘It’s just my mum . . .’

  ‘I’m sure your mum can make her own way to market. Okay? Are you with me on this?’

  He looked genuinely pained. Maybe the stress of his exams really was getting to him. Or he was an utter wimp. ‘Yes . . . mostly.’

  ‘And tell you what, I will personally coach you through whatever revision you need to do. You know how smart I am, Jeff, I’m borderline genius. By the time I’m through with you, your exams will be a walkover.’

  ‘Really? Seriously? You would do that?’

  ‘Absolutely. You have my word.’

  ‘You’ve promised me things before and you always manage to wriggle out.’

  ‘Jeff – look at me. I’m a changed man. I’m off all those bloody pills and potions. You can see I’m different; all I’m asking you to do is trust me on this.’

  He ummed and aahed a bit more, and I gave him the encouragement of raised eyebrows and eventually he succumbed and promised to stay with me while we took on the enigmatic stranger now sitting on a bar stool on the customer side of the counter. Alison had brought it into the store while she was pregnant and due to be working the till, saying she didn’t want to get varicose veins by standing about all day. I suspected that it had as much to do with her being lazy.

  Apart from when he was involved in a life or death struggle with Francis Delaney or was trying to strangle Jeff, Gabriel seemed like a gentle soul. I was convinced by his violent reaction to Jeff’s knee squeezing that the solution, the fix, lay very close to the surface with him and that the key to it was still the music he’d been playing relentlessly in Purdysburn. If there’d been a keyboard in the shop he would have been playing it, but as there was not, I half-expected him to be picking out imaginary notes on the counter but his hands were resting palm down on his legs, without a hint of movement. The only sounds came from my pacemaker and the growing rumble outside as rush hour approached. In amongst the snorts and coughs of the traffic, I detected a distant Fire Brigade siren. I turned to Jeff.

  ‘You heard the music at the hospital when you came to visit. Did it ring any bells?’

  ‘The piano stuff? I thought that was just like Muzak, piped in.’

  ‘No, it was Gabriel. All day, and all night.’

  ‘I remember it being really annoying. And . . .’ His brow furrowed; he waved a finger in the air as if he was conducting an orchestra. ‘It was kind of familiar. I remember thinking, What is that? It reminded me of something. Yes, it did.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s the thing, it’s one of those really annoying tunes you can’t remember. It was . . .’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Hum it for me.’

  I made a couple of false starts before I got to my best approximation of it. As I did, I studied Gabriel for some reaction, but there was none, just that same vacant look. In Tommy, Tommy was rendered dd and b because as a child he discovered his mother having passionate sex with a stranger, which he mistook for her being attacked. Given what I now knew of the intimacies of sexual congress, what with the fitting in of various parts to various holes, I understood how that would have been incredibly traumatic for any child. It was a situation I could well relate to, having once discovered my mother in flagrante delicto with two sailors and a dwarf; but I was clearly made of sterner stuff and it hadn’t affected me at all. If Gabriel had indeed been traumatised, I was thinking that it must have something to do with the murder of Fat Sam.

  As I hummed his theme tune, Jeff wagged his finger in time and said, ‘I do know it, I do, but I just can’t get it.’

  ‘Think, Jeff.’

  ‘Your telling me to think doesn’t help. It’s like when I lose the shop keys, you always say. “Well, where did you leave them?” It’s no help at all. Just . . . hum it. Hum it again.’

  I hummed, and I hummed, and Jeff began to hum along with me and we were just reaching a harmonious climax when there was a hammering on the shutters outside and we both let out a shout of fear. I was halfway to the rear exit, leaving Jeff in my wake and Gabriel in his daze before I recognised a distant, shrill voice demanding to be let in and I knew that we had been rumbled by Alison.

  I said, through the shutter, ‘Not today, thanks,’ and Alison said something that included an expletive, so I told her to go round the back and a few moments later Jeff sheepishly unlocked the door and ushered her in before quickly securing it again.

  Alison came down the shop, with her eyes fixed the whole way on Gabriel, nodding to herself and going uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh and then stopping in front of him and looking into his face and giving a last uh-huh before finally looking at me and snapping out, ‘Do you mind telling me what the bloody hell you think you’re playing at?’ So I told her and she said, ‘Bloody hell, you half-wit, you know everyone and their police dog is out looking for him – and you, for that matter? And it’s only a matter of time before they search here?’

  ‘I thought the shutters being closed might throw them off the trail,’ I said.

  ‘Sure, Mystery Man, for about twenty minutes. What were you thinking of? And why didn’t you call me instead of that lummox?’

  ‘I think we both know the answer to that.’

  ‘Jesus, get over yourself. You’re my partner and the father of my child, I’m not going to turn you in.’

  ‘You had me committed, Alison.’

  ‘I had to, and I was just getting round to thinking that you were much improved. Now I’m not so sure. I can’t believe you called this idiot instead!’

  She nodded at Jeff, who gave her a helpless gesture in return.

  ‘He was the only idiot I thought would come and get me at that time of the morning,’ I said.

  ‘And I did,’ said Jeff. ‘But listen, I’m sure you two have plenty to talk about, and I have revision to do.’ He made a move for his keys, which were sitting on the counter, but I scooped them up first and held them at arm’s length.

  ‘Hold on to your horses,’ I said. ‘We’re not done here.’ I indicated Gabriel.

  Jeff sighed and said, ‘We’re getting nowhere. Humming is getting us nowhere.’

  ‘Humming?’ Alison asked.

  Pretty soon our little gathering, comprising one murder suspect and three-quarters of a barbershop quartet, was humming the theme from Gabriel, but getting no closer to identifying it. Alison said she recognised the melody, but couldn’t place it. Jeff invited her to join the club.

  ‘It’s like from a TV advert or something?’ she suggested.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Jeff. ‘And yet . . . not. It’s on the tip of my tongue.’

  ‘It’s really annoying,’ said Alison. She moved closer to the unblinking Gabriel. ‘Look at him, he doesn’t look like he’d harm a fly.’ She reached out to touch him.

  Both Jeff and I made a grab for her arm.

  Jeff got there first, because he has the reactions of a human.

  I said, ‘Don’t do that. He has a tendency to overreact.’

  ‘He nearly killed me,’ said Jeff, ‘yet I’m shouted down if I dare suggest he might still be capable of murder.’

  ‘I didn’t shout,’ I said. ‘I used reason and logic.’

  ‘Look at my throat,’ said Jeff. ‘It’s going the colour of my eye.’

  Alison said, ‘Well, at least the jury is still out on him, because it won’t be out for long when they try you two for helping him escape.’

  ‘I was only following orders,’ said Jeff.

  Alison gave him an exasperated look, before transferring it to me. ‘You didn’t call me.’

  ‘Because I knew you would hear about the escape on the news, and you’d guess we’d be here. I didn’t want there to be any record of me calling you because you are, as you so rightly point out, the mother of a child.’

  ‘Your child,’ she said, poking me, ‘and your partner.’

  ‘If you say so.’ I took hold of her hand and cupped it in mine. ‘I just wanted to keep you out of trouble, okay?’

>   ‘What about me?’ Jeff asked.

  ‘What about you?’ Alison and I said at the same time.

  We smiled at each other. It was good to be in a loving relationship. I put my arm round her and gave her a squeeze. Together we scowled at Jeff for a bit. Eventually she smiled up at me. ‘I’m just glad you’re safe. DI Robinson was convinced you’d end up in a skip with your guts hanging out. He said you were easily led, and I have to agree.’

  I unhooked my arm. It was good while it lasted.

  ‘I – he – when were you speaking to him?’

  ‘About half an hour ago. Darling, I didn’t know you were on the news. I’m too knackered being up all hours with Page to be bothered with the TV or radio. I found out because DI Robinson banged on our door at seven this morning looking for you and Laughing Boy here.’ She poked a finger at Gabriel. ‘And he didn’t believe me when I said I knew nothing about it. It took me ages to get rid of him. He checked the whole house out. He woke Page and your mum, and they both screamed blue murder. He said if I heard from you, you were to turn Gabriel in, though he didn’t call him Gabriel. He said Gabriel was a nut who would chop anyone up who crossed him. He said he knew you were up to your neck in this, but this time it had gone too far. He said interfering and meddling is one thing . . .’

  ‘Two, technically,’ I said.

  ‘. . . but a psychopath on the run from a mental hospital is another thing entirely. And I’m not convinced he wasn’t talking about you.’ I made a face. She made it back. ‘When I left the house, he followed me.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Do I look that stupid?’

  ‘The jury’s still . . .’ Jeff began, but then stopped when Alison looked at him.

  ‘I gave him the slip. It was easy enough. He got caught at the lights, we turned the corner. I jumped out and hid behind a car, he came round the corner and cruised right on after the Mystery Machine.’

  She looked pleased with herself. Jeff and I looked at each other, confused.

  To make it clearer, I said, ‘I’m confused. Who exactly was driving if you got out?’

  ‘Who do you think? Your mother.’

  ‘No, I mean, seriously. Who was driving?’

  ‘I am serious. She takes Page out for a spin once in a while to help get him to sleep.’

  I stared at her. ‘What . . . what the fuh . . . no, I mean, really. Really who—’

  ‘Your mother! She’s fine! And leading Robinson on a wild-goose chase as we speak.’

  ‘Alison,’ I said, ‘please tell me you’re joking. Mother has not had control of a vehicle since she drove a tank during the Prague Spring. And also she has recently had a stroke. Tell me you didn’t leave her behind the wheel of the Mystery Machine with my son and heir on board at the same time.’

  ‘Yes, I did, and she’s perfectly fine.’

  ‘Jesus! What is happening to the world? Did someone turn it upside down?’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said Jeff.

  ‘Your mother is a new, new woman these last few days. Friendly, charming, and desperate to help out. It’s a pleasure having her around.’

  ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?! She’s a fucking monster!’

  ‘No.’ She looked stern now – hard, even. ‘What has become clear is that there was another monster in the house all along. But you’re getting better now.’

  ‘That – that – that – that – is just ridiculous. I love my mother, but she has bewitched you.’

  She glared, and I glared back.

  ‘Well,’ she said eventually, ‘time will tell, won’t it? Now do you want to know what I managed to find out about the case, while you were busy escaping, and you were busy aiding and abetting, and why I haven’t called the police myself to let them know where you are?’

  36

  First, there was coffee from Starbucks to be had. We sent Jeff, on the grounds that if DI Robinson spotted him he would dismiss him as being unimportant, irrelevant and an idiot, or for shorthand purposes, a poet. While he was gone I said, ‘You seemed pretty certain I’d be here.’

  ‘Where else would you go?’

  ‘The shutters down didn’t fool you?’

  ‘Nope. And leaving a light on upstairs, when I knew I’d switched everything off didn’t help your cause much either. Actually, I thought you’d already been caught. I was walking up Botanic and there were police cars and the Fire Brigade and I expected to find you under siege, but it was just some old car burning on that wasteground round the corner.’ She shook her head and clutched my hand and said, ‘What am I going to do with you?’

  I said, ‘More to the point, what are we going to do with him?’

  Alison regarded Gabriel and laughed. ‘God, we’d be better off opening up the shop and putting him behind the till. He’d talk to the customers more than you do.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ I said.

  ‘It’s fair and it’s accurate.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you want to hear what happened, or do you want to wait till Igor gets back?’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘His input is occasionally useful.’

  She raised the other eyebrow. She was talented like that. Jeff returned fairly quickly. We gathered anew around the counter. I sipped at my Caramel Macchiato while they drank filter Americano. He had bought a salmon bagel for Gabriel. He handed it to me and I handed it to Alison and she very, very carefully pressed it into his hand and curled his fingers around it. When he didn’t immediately raise it to his mouth, she gingerly lifted his hand and brushed his lips with the edge of the bread, but he didn’t open up or otherwise react. She set his hand back on his leg, still clutching the bagel.

  ‘You can lead a horse to water,’ she said.

  ‘Or a whore to culture,’ I added.

  She studied me and then decided not to make an issue of it.

  ‘What did I miss?’ Jeff asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘We were waiting for you.’

  Jeff beamed. Alison snorted.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if you’re all sitting comfortably? If I remember correctly, your instructions to me were to follow Nicola, the woman in the green hat and coat. You said, “Go get her”, which I interpreted as “Find out who she is and what she’s managed to get out of Gabriel”, and then report back to you.’

  ‘The problem was our lack of access,’ said Jeff, ‘so is it not pretty irrelevant now he’s here?’

  ‘No, as it turns out,’ said Alison. ‘Listen – her full name is Nicola Sheridan, she is a history teacher at Methody . . .’

  ‘Methodist College,’ I said.

  ‘Do you mind? She is a history teacher at Methody – in fact, she runs the history department. I didn’t quite manage to talk to her as she left the hospital, but I was able to follow her. She has a house on the Castlereagh Road, a big detached place, a bit ramshackle. I gave her ten minutes to get in and settled, and then I knocked on the door. Remember how she was dressed, like a Sunday School teacher? And you said she was a do-gooding cow? Well, by the time she answered the door – what a transformation. Hair all down and straggly, designer jeans, cigarette in one hand and heavy metal blasting out of the front room. Before I could say anything she apologised and went to turn it down. She came back out and I showed her your card . . .’

  ‘My card?’

  ‘Well, I have no other. And I said I was a private investigator and that I understood that she was a regular visitor to Purdysburn Hospital, delivering much-needed pastoral care to the patients there. I said I was working on behalf of one patient in particular, in the secure wing, the unidentified man in the white suit, and would she mind answering some questions about him, and she invited me in and sat me down in the lounge and offered me a cup of tea and I said, “Yes, black with two sugars”.’

  ‘Great detail,’ I said.

  Alison made a sarcastic face, and said, ‘I followed her into the kitchen, dishes everywhere. She put the kettle on and studied your card and read out the Murder is Our B
usiness bit and seemed impressed by that but said she wasn’t sure how she could help me or even if she was allowed to, but that anyway The Man in the White Suit never said anything and all she did with him was recite a few verses from the good book and say a prayer – so how could that be of any use to us? I asked if he never said anything and she said, “No, he just sits there and I pray for him,” and I said, “You must have the patience of a saint and a heart of gold, to go in there with all those dangerous men,” and she said she felt it was her calling, and I asked if she’d been doing it long and she said about six months, and I asked how she got into it in the first place and she said her husband had died quite recently and that left a big hole in her life and she was really just looking for something challenging, and rewarding, and then she looked at the card again and said she’d heard of No Alibis before, wasn’t it a bookshop and she saw the address and said, “Yes. No Alibis, I’ve been past it a few times and always meant to call in,” and I said, “Yes, everyone says that but they never do, that’s why the business is in crisis”.’

  ‘Did you really need to tell her that?’

  ‘I was ingratiating myself,’ said Alison.

  ‘By doing me down?’

  ‘I wasn’t doing you down, I was getting her onside because I didn’t know if you were going to get access and she might have been our only means of getting to him, and this all happened while the kettle was boiling, so she made the tea and put it on a tray with Jaffa Cakes and carried it into the lounge, and I got the impression that she was keen to talk. I asked her how long she’d been at Methody and she said too long and laughed, and that’s when she said she taught history and that she loved it, and I asked about her husband and what happened and she said they’d only been married five years but he had died suddenly but that it was God’s will. I remarked on the heavy metal blasting out and she said it was Christian rock and that it did her head good and I said I was more into hip-hop and she made a face and we laughed, but really, I wasn’t laughing because you know something?’