Mystery Man 04 - The Prisoner of Brenda

by Bateman

  ‘Lots,’ I said.

  ‘It wasn’t Christian rock. I grew up with heavy metal. My sister . . .’

  ‘You have a sister?’ Jeff asked.

  ‘Yes. My sister . . .’

  ‘Is she single?’ Jeff asked.

  ‘As far as you’re concerned, no. My sister was – is – a heavy metal nut. I hate it, but at the same time I know an awful lot about it, I couldn’t help it. Nicola Sheridan wasn’t playing Christian rock, she was playing “Children of the Grave” by Black Sabbath.’

  ‘Maybe she played it by mistake,’ I suggested.

  ‘Nobody plays Black Sabbath by mistake.’

  ‘Okay, so she likes Black Sabbath. Your point?’

  ‘It just . . . jarred. And then she kind of turned it around and started asking all these questions about our business and how we got involved in the case and who was actually employing us, seeing as how The Man in the White Suit wasn’t saying anything, and part of me was thinking, She’s just bored and a bit nosy, but there was a bit of me also thinking, She’s a little too inquisitive – and doesn’t she protest too much about being in the God squad and . . .’

  ‘. . . maybe you’re making a mountain out of . . .’

  ‘And then I saw it.’

  ‘Saw what?’

  ‘Nicola was resting her cup on the arm of her chair and she knocked it over – I don’t know, nerves, just an accident – but anyway, it was all over her jeans and she said they were new and she ran to the kitchen to sponge them before they got stained and I got up and had a look around. It’s one of those houses where there’s loads of framed photos on the wall and on every available surface, and there were lots of her and her husband Bobby at weddings and baptisms and on holiday all over the place. And then I was looking at one of their own wedding day and I was thinking how happy they looked and how awful it must be to lose a loved one and how wonderful it must be to have a wedding day, and I lifted it to get a better look at her dress and there was another photo right behind it, not hidden exactly, just blocked by the one I was holding and I just kind of half-noticed it at first, but then my eyes were drawn back to it, I don’t know why, intuition maybe, but whatever it was I bent a little closer and I saw it was Nicola and Bobby raising their glasses at some dinner-party, but it wasn’t them so much as who they were with.’

  She looked at me and smiled and said, ‘They were raising a glass and all chummy and smiles with Fergus O’Dromodery, Bernard O’Dromodery and Sean O’Dromodery – in short, the Brothers Karamazov.’

  I let it sit for several long moments. Then I said, ‘And you gave her my business card?’

  37

  ‘Well,’ Alison was saying, ‘I couldn’t get out of there quick enough. It gave me the heeby jeebies.’

  ‘Why?’ Jeff asked. ‘One photo doesn’t mean anything. I have a photo of myself with Seamus Heaney – it doesn’t mean that I was somehow involved in his murder.’

  ‘Has Seamus Heaney been murdered? When I was in hosp—?’

  ‘No, Jesus! Famous Seamus is alive and kicking,’ said Alison. ‘And I’m not saying she’s a murderer, I’m just saying I thought it was a wild coincidence, enough to make me go hunting for more info as soon as I got home, or as soon as I got home and fed Page and made supper for your mother and put the wash on and hoovered three carpets and washed two floors and took the wash out and tumble-dried what wasn’t going to shrink and hung the rest on the radiators, which I had to bleed because they’re so old and decrepit and then I had to iron what was tumbled and get your mum to bed and take her up her sherry and then put Page to bed and catch up on EastEnders because I have to have a little me time, but eventually I got round to searching for more info on her and her husband – and what did I discover?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but I’m beginning to feel redundant.’

  ‘I discovered that she didn’t take her husband’s name when she got married.’

  ‘So? Why’s that relevant?’

  ‘Because it slowed down the search for him.’

  ‘And why wouldn’t she change her name?’ Jeff asked.

  ‘Because you spend half your life building a reputation based on your own name, then you get married and you have to start all over again.’

  ‘Sounds like as good a reason as any not to get . . .’ I started to say.

  ‘Park it. What I then discovered on a building-trade website was a photograph of the O’Dromodery Brothers with the husband, full name Robert Preston. They were celebrating breaking ground at the site of their new shopping centre in West Belfast. He was the architect. The Preston Practice. He wasn’t an employee, but judging from the website, which is still up, most of his work came through the O’Dromoderys.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Is it not plenty for half an hour’s work with someone attached to my left nipple and biting hard the whole time?’

  ‘I hope you’re talking about Page.’

  ‘No,’ said Alison, ‘I’m talking about DI Robinson.’

  That was cruel. She knew how I felt about DI Robinson and the attentions he paid to her. I think she realised that. She punched me playfully in the arm. And then she laughed.

  ‘There’s no need to laugh,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, there is,’ she said. ‘In the old days, if I’d punched you in the arm you would have cried like a baby. But you just stood there and took it like a man.’

  ‘The implication being that I wasn’t a man before.’

  ‘You have an amazing ability to suck the goodness out of any compliment, Mystery Man. I wonder, though, if the new you now has the ability to give a few compliments of your own, for example, for what I’ve just found out.’

  ‘Well done,’ I said.

  ‘Once more,’ said Alison, ‘with feeling.’

  ‘Really well done,’ I said.

  She sighed. ‘Well, we can work on that. But seriously, Robert Preston.’

  ‘I have him,’ said Jeff.

  We turned to discover that while we were bantering, Jeff had moved to the computer and typed in the late architect’s name. Google had brought up a series of headlines from local newspapers about the hit and run death of what they all described as one of Northern Ireland’s leading architects. He clicked on one page and we read over his shoulder an article from the Irish News which gave a few scant details of the incident and showed a small photograph of the man. He had been knocked down while out jogging half a mile from his home eight months previously. Police had appealed for witnesses.

  I drummed my fingers on the counter.

  Jeff said, ‘The bodies are piling up.’

  He wasn’t wrong. Alison counted them off. ‘In chronological order – Robert Preston, Fergus O’Dromodery, Fat Sam Mahood, Francis Delaney and, most recently, Bernard O’Dromodery. Having anything to do with the Karamazovs, including being one of them, would seem to be extremely bad for your health.’

  ‘There’s nothing to say Robert Preston was murdered,’ said Jeff. ‘Hit and runs happen all the time.’

  ‘It’s too big a coincidence,’ said Alison. She looked at me. ‘Why so quiet?’

  ‘Just marvelling at how my young apprentices have come on. Okay – there’s definitely two camps here. Fergus and Bernard and Fat Sam, all with defixios, and then Francis Delaney and Bobby Preston without.’

  ‘We don’t know there isn’t one for Preston,’ said Alison.

  ‘The pattern is that they’re buried close to home or a place of work or, in Fat Sam’s case, somewhere he was known to be a regular visitor. Delaney died in a brawl in Purdysburn, and I pretty much know it wasn’t Gabriel who killed him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I just do. It wasn’t premeditated, hence no defixio. And if you’re going to deliberately run someone down in a car, you can’t predict in advance exactly where they’re going to be, or when they’re going to step off the footpath or cross at a junction.’ I avoided eye-contact with Alison while I said this. She didn�
�t need to know that I had made several attempts on her life. ‘If you were being true to your operating ethos you’d have to bury dozens of defixios to make sure they were in the right place at the right time. So two camps.’

  ‘But connected.’

  ‘Yes. Definitely. Somehow. So that brings us back to Nicola Sheridan. Do-gooding Christian with a penchant for Satanic rock, who just happens to become a hospital visitor where Gabriel is being held or she’s gone all Miss Marple on us.’

  ‘Would that be a reference to the Miss Marple who first appeared in The Murder in the Vicarage in 1930?’ Alison asked.

  I beamed at her. She beamed back.

  ‘You’re coming along very well, my young Padawan,’ I said, ‘although it was actually in a short story four years earlier. But full marks.’

  We were quite a team. I’d always said it.

  ‘But what I’m saying basically,’ said Alison, ‘is that Nicola believes her husband was murdered, and because the police think it’s just a normal hit and run, she has set about trying to track down the culprit herself.’

  ‘Is that not a bit . . . far-fetched?’ Jeff asked. ‘You said she’d been visiting Gabriel for how long?’

  I looked at Gabriel. ‘Six months, was it?’

  He did not respond.

  ‘About that, yes,’ I said.

  ‘You really think she’s going to pretend to be someone else, and visit that hospital – what, every week?’ Jeff asked. ‘Just on the off-chance that a deaf mute with a penchant for violence might either confess to her husband’s murder or lead her to who really did it?’

  ‘I can’t believe you said penchant,’ said Alison. ‘And it’s not that far-fetched. If you lost someone you loved, you’d clutch at whatever straws there were. In fact, if someone killed you,’ and she pointed at me, ‘I wouldn’t rest until I’d tracked them down and exposed them and they were brought to justice, and then I’d write a book about it and sell the movie rights and retire to a life of leisure with someone new and less annoying.’

  ‘I’m still available,’ said Jeff.

  ‘Less annoying, I said.’

  I rubbed at my chin. Gabriel was still just staring into space. Alison and Jeff, on the other hand, were both looking at me, to me, their leader, to show them the way forward.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘We’re stuck on the music. Sean O’Dromodery is shacked up with bodyguards and Martin Brady is staying behind closed doors, so they’re both off-limits. We’ve spoken to the current staff at the All Star and been stonewalled there, we’ve spoken to the ex-staff and learned nothing relevant. We’ve interviewed Gloria Mahood and we briefly suspected her, but based on nothing really. At the moment, the only connection we have between Gabriel and Fat Sam is some CCTV footage which is circumstantial at best. If the O’Dromoderys sent Francis Delaney in to get at Gabriel, then we have to presume that Nicola Sheridan isn’t working for them, but independently. They may be after the same thing, they may not. But if she has been going in to see him for the past few months, then we also have to presume that she thinks she’s getting somewhere and will undoubtedly be feeling thwarted by Gabriel’s escape. So what we’re going to do is take Gabriel to see her, and between us all we’re going to find out what they know about who did what to who.’

  ‘Whom,’ said Jeff.

  ‘And I need you to look after the shop,’ said I.

  The surprising thing was that Jeff did not protest. I think perhaps that being half-strangled had made him realise that we were dealing with real danger. We had shared many previous adventures together, but he had never really been exposed to violence before. He was a sensitive guy. He had the soul, if not the talent, of a poet.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘I’ll open up the shop. It’ll give me the chance to get some more revision done.’

  I did not rise to his bait.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I appreciate it.’ His eyes narrowed, searching for a sarcasm that was not there. I turned to Alison and said, ‘We’re going to need the Mystery Machine.’

  She produced her mobile phone. ‘On it,’ she said.

  I nodded at Gabriel and said, ‘This would all be a lot easier if you talked to us.’ He did not look at me or otherwise respond.

  Alison came off the phone, grinning. ‘Your mother,’ she said, ‘takes me to the fair. She led DI Thompson on a wild-goose chase, and then parked on Bedford Street. She put a three-hour pay and display ticket on the window and then walked off with Page; she waited round the corner and watched as Thompson checked the time on it, and evidently decided he had better things to do for three hours and disappeared, at which point she got back in the machine. She’ll be here in a minute.’

  And she was. She arrived at the back door and I ignored her in favour of taking Page out of her arms to check for signs of abuse. When nothing was immediately apparent I held him up in the air and shook him gently and saw him smile and my heart pounded and I purred, ‘And how are you, little man?’

  And Mother snapped, ‘He’s four months old, he doesn’t fucking talk yet.’

  38

  Alison came back down the driveway to my window and said, ‘Well, she’s a bit shocked and stunned, but she says to come on in and bring him with you.’

  I looked up at the house. Nicola Sheridan stood in the doorway, in black jeans that were slightly too tight for her frame and a voluminous black T-shirt; her hair was indeed frizzy. Satanic rock was not blasting out. I had told Alison not to reveal anything other than the fact that we had Gabriel with us. I wanted to see the look on her face when I told her we’d rumbled her.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll coax him out, but you keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn’t try to phone anyone. I don’t want Robinson scooting up here and surrounding us.’

  As Alison returned to the house I slid open the back of the Mystery Machine. Gabriel was buckled into a fold-down seat, and surrounded by boxes of books which Jeff had not yet found the time to move to the shop and unpack, what with his revision, and exams, and poetry and an endless quest to save the world one political prisoner at a time.

  I said, ‘All right, fella? Just taking you to meet an old friend.’

  I waited for what little traffic there was to pass before releasing his belt and guiding him down the step. I kept a hand on his arm as I walked him up the drive. As we approached the door Nicola beamed at him and said what a turn-up for the books this was and how she’d heard all about it on the news and she was really worried about him and she almost, almost put a hand to his face, but held back, and I wondered if he’d had a go at her at some point as well.

  As we moved past her into the lounge Gabriel’s eyes did not meet Nicola’s or otherwise appear to take in his new surroundings. The lounge was as cluttered with photographs as Alison had described; there was a sofa and two armchairs – the design was a mock-Chippendale I knew from Mother’s own poor taste in furniture. I stood Gabriel by one of the armchairs, and when he showed no inclination to sit, I gently lowered him into it. Nicola hovered over him for a moment and said, ‘Poor wee soul,’ and then asked if we wanted shortbread, she’d only made it that morning. I said no, and Alison said yes, and when Nicola went into the kitchen to get it I told Alison to go with her to make sure she didn’t call anyone, and Alison hissed that I’d already told her that and she wasn’t a child who needed constant reminding and I said I knew that.

  There was small talk from the kitchen. I already knew Nicola to be an actress, but now I knew she was a liar as well. She had not made shortbread that morning; if she had, there would have been residual smells. I detected neither butter nor flour nor caster sugar, nor even just the oven smell. I am an expert on shortbread and have studied it, and made it, and promoted it. Shortbread was chosen as the United Kingdom’s representative at Café Europe during the Austrian presidency of the European Union in 2006. I could have told Nicola Sheridan this but chose not to in case she thought I was weird. She would have been wrong. It is good to have a broad base of general know
ledge. Weird would be to have only known about crime fiction and badgers.

  While I waited for the shortbread and tea to appear I perused the many photographs on display and soon found the dinner-party shot that had so heebie-jeebied Alison. I noted that it showed a Nicola Sheridan who was at least two stones lighter and perhaps ten years younger. She was the only woman present. There was no Martin Brady and I supposed that it pre-dated him. Bernard O’Dromodery was the only brother who had married, and I wondered if in fact they were all gay; it was not uncommon for siblings to share traits and preferences, although they could, equally, go the other, opposite way, like my brother Mycroft. We had been shown directly into the lounge when we’d arrived; now I saw across the hall a room with crowded bookshelves and one leg of a piano. I presumed there were three other legs and that the rest was hidden by the half-open door.

  I sat in the other armchair as Nicola came in with a pot of tea and three cups and saucers on a tray and Alison followed with a matching plate of shortbread. I could tell at a glance that they were Marks & Spencer All Butter Shortbread Fingers which currently retailed at £2.08 for a 210-gram packet. I also kept this information to myself. I said no to the tea and the shortbread. Nicola offered me Coke or Fanta or a glass of milk and I said no. I was gloriously caffeine-free and Alison helpfully pointed out that I was lactose intolerant, although I was no longer sure that I was. Gabriel was offered tea and shortbread, but did not respond.

  Nicola sighed and said, ‘Same as he ever was. I don’t know how he keeps the weight on him – he never seems to eat.’

  ‘They coach him through it in the hospital,’ I said. ‘Eventually he takes something.’

  Nicola said, ‘So, you’re from No Alibis. I was telling your wife I’ve been past the shop and always meant to call in.’

  ‘She’s not my wife,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alison.

  I said, ‘Thank you for the tea and homemade shortbread, and for agreeing to see us and . . .’ And I indicated Gabriel.