A Murder for Christmas

by David W Robinson

  Twenty minutes later, they stepped out into the thronging streets again, the women tackling their shopping with apparently indefatigable energy, Joe trudging miserably after them, laden with carrier bags, mostly containing goods Sheila and Brenda had bought and which they could no longer carry.

  “You’re using me as a bloody pack mule,” he grumbled.

  “And we have a nice bag of hay for you in the stables at the Regency,” Brenda teased.

  By two o’clock, even the women had begun to flag.

  “Time for din-din,” Brenda said.

  “I thought you’d never get round to it,” Joe whined. Of the mass of goods he carried, his purchases were limited to small bottles of eau-de-toilette, one each for Sheila, Brenda and Christine, a bottle of after-shave lotion for Lee and a selection box of chocolates for his great-nephew, Danny. He had also bought tobacco for himself and a couple of disposable lighters.

  “That’s me spent up for Christmas,” he had declared when he came out of the tobacconist’s.

  They tried several cafés on Vicar Lane and Boar Lane before turning back up Briggate and eventually deciding on Debenhams.

  “You get us a table, Joe,” Sheila had suggested, “and Brenda and I will queue up.”

  It was non-starter. The queue was so long that the management were refusing to allow anyone through to the tables until they were served.

  “Leave it to me,” Joe told them, and doubled up convincingly as if he were struggling to breathe and walk.

  Taking his cue, Sheila went into negotiation with the manager. “Excuse me. I’m sorry to be a nuisance, but my friend is disabled, and he’s suffering a little. Would it be possible for him to sit while I queue up for him?”

  The manager took instant pity on them, and agreed to make an exception in Joe’s case. Under the envious eyes of some in the queue, he took their mound of purchases, and helped Joe through the multitude to a table by the window, where he now sat, resting his aching bones, waiting for his two companions, with only a grumpy old woman behind and her male companion for company.

  Even through the noise of the café, the sound of the Salvation Army playing Oh Come All Ye Faithful out in the street still reached his ears. The pavements heaved with people, one or two Santas stood in shop doorways welcoming customers, and those same doorways were packed with slow-moving whirlpools of humanity fighting their way in or out. And yet there did not appear to be much friction. It was as if everyone had taken on the seasonal air of peace and goodwill. Despite the comparatively early hour, the Christmas lights were on, dispelling the overcast gloom and bringing a feeling of good cheer to the retail revellers.

  All except Joe. He passed the 20 minutes or so waiting for Sheila and Brenda by ringing the Lazy Luncheonette and hassling Christine (again) until she tired of his whining and cut the connection.

  For want of something to occupy his mind, he checked the queue again and the pangs of hunger grew in his belly. At least Sheila and Brenda were almost at the checkout.

  “All I’m asking is that you give me what I’ve earned. What I have a right to expect.”

  Listening to the woman sat behind him, Joe was almost relieved to know that he was not the only one in a foul mood. Recalling the way she had spoken to him, he half turned in his seat, and demanded, “Are you talking to me?”

  She glowered first at her companion, a tanned, stocky man whom Joe guessed to be in his fifties, and then at Joe. “Mind your own bloody business.”

  It was for moments like that Joe treasured his high threshold of embarrassment and sheer neck. He feared nothing and no one, and if rudeness was the order of the day, he was more than capable of matching it.

  “You know when people wish you a merry Christmas?” he asked. “Are they being sarcastic?” He cast a glance at the tanned man sat opposite her. “And you should do yourself a favour, pal. Suicide. It’s cheaper than divorce.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” the man replied with a vague smile, “but we’re not married.” The accent sounded strange. American, but not quite American. British, possibly, with an American drawl. Or maybe Dutch. Their accent could often be confused with English and American.

  “Sensible,” said Joe, and returned to people-watching through the windows and around the café.

  His exchange with the bad tempered woman had not made them the centre of attention (the café was too busy for most people to notice) but one man appeared to be taking an interest. Sat several tables away, his bearded features serene and composed, a pristine white shirt and dark tie showing beneath the folds of his dark, quilted coat, his eyes stared directly at Joe … no. Not at Joe, but at the table behind him where the couple had settled into a more muted debate. There was no emotion in the beard’s face. He simply watched intently, almost as if he were waiting to see the outcome of the argument.

  “Dear me, what a to-do.” Sheila’s voice brought him back into the cafeteria.

  Dismissing the couple and their observer as none of his business, relieved at the thought of food on the horizon, Joe helped unload her tray of teapots, cups, saucers, and cakes. Behind her, Brenda waited with three hot meals.

  “It’s like Debenhams at Christmas.” Sheila smiled. “Are you feeling a little better, Joe?”

  “No. And I won’t until January fourth.”

  Sheila removed her tray and sat opposite Joe while Brenda placed hers on the table. “You’re all right with fish and chips, aren’t you Joe?” Brenda asked. “Only we figured you wouldn’t want a steak and kidney pie cos you sell ’em all week.”

  “Whatever it is, it won’t be a patch on the Lazy Luncheonette,” Joe replied, lifting two plates from the tray and placing one in front of Sheila.

  With Brenda’s tray unloaded, she sat alongside Joe and prepared to tuck in.

  “It’s absolutely nuts out there,” Joe said, chewing through a mouthful of battered cod. He nodded at the scene out in the street. “Next year I’m going to Lundy Island.”

  “Lundy?” Brenda asked. “I thought that was a shipping forecast thingy.”

  “It’s an island in the Bristol Channel,” Sheila explained. “It’s where people who don’t like Christmas can go.” She chewed delicately on her fish. “I think Joe would be in excellent company there. In fact, he could open a new branch…”

  “Please your damned self. You know what happens next.”

  Having snapped at her male companion, the woman behind Joe jolted her chair backwards to stand up, knocking it into Joe. He was about to protest, but Brenda got in first.

  Turning and craning her neck backwards, she gazed sympathetically into the woman’s eyes. “Is everything all right?”

  “Get out of my way, you fat cow,” barked the woman and barged past Brenda to storm from the cafeteria.

  “Hey!” Joe half rose.

  Brenda stopped him. “It doesn’t matter, Joe.”

  “She ought to learn some manners.”

  “You’ll have to forgive her, ma’am,” said the man. “She’s a little highly strung.”

  “She should be,” Joe commented. “About six feet off the ground.”

  “Let it go, Joe,” Brenda urged. “We’re here to enjoy ourselves.”

  “Joe is enjoying himself.” Sheila pointed out. “He loves a good argument, don’t you, dear?”

  “I don’t like bad manners,” he pressed, “and if you’d have let me I’d have given her both barrels.”

  Putting down her knife and fork, Brenda huddled up to him. “I’m ready for both barrels, Joe, whenever you want to give them me.”

  The two women laughed and Joe scowled. Looking around for another direction to vent his anger, he noticed the beard hurrying towards the escalators. “If there’s nothing going on there,” he muttered, “I’ll give everyone a free meat pie on Wednesday.”

  ***

  Please your damned self. You know what happens next.

  Jennifer’s last words to Dennis Wright echoed around her head as she hurried along the icy pav
ements of The Headrow, every slippery step fuelled by a fury she had not known in years. The last time she had been so angry was when she learned of her ex-husband’s affair with a colleague.

  Paradoxically, Dennis’ rejection hurt more than her husband’s. She had been married for nearly 25 years, and despite her own shortcomings, she was shattered when it came to an abrupt and adulterous end. She had known Dennis since her university days, when they were constant companions. It was a relationship that petered out naturally as they went their separate ways, and contact became limited to occasional correspondence. Even that stopped when Dennis moved from West Yorkshire to Alabama, but it had been granted a fresh lease of life when they both became members of the LHS. They had finally met again during the summer before last, when she flew to Alabama to work with him for three months. Not only work. The fires that had burned so strongly back in the 1970s, were re-ignited and those 13 weeks in Alabama were some of the most passionate she could recall.

  Logic dictated that the wreckage of her marriage should have been more painful, but it was not. Or was it simply that she had had time to get over the divorce? It was, after all, five years in the past, whereas her steamy affair with Dennis had come to an end only when she flew back to the UK.

  Such questions, she knew, served no practical purpose. She was hurting more than she could ever recall and that was all that mattered. Snapping at the threesome on the table behind her was proof, as if she needed any, of her pain. But she couldn’t help it.

  For two hours she and Dennis had wandered the streets of Leeds, shopping, talking, reminiscing, Jennifer taking photographs – Dennis even agreed to appear on one with her, and they had press-ganged a passer-by into taking the picture for them. And then they had gone into Debenhams for lunch and for over an hour, when he wasn’t queuing for refills of tea and coffee, she had pressed him on the subject of them. Jennifer was due to accompany him on his book signing tour, which would begin here in Leeds on the 28th. It would finish in London in February, and Jennifer’s main aim was persuading him to take her back to the United States, let them begin a new life together. Dennis steadfastly refused to even consider it.

  At first the rejection had been mild, almost flattering.

  “You’re an exciting woman, Jennifer,” he had told her. “Seductive and inventive, the best lover I’ve known, but you don’t want to waste that on a tedious life with a boring academic.”

  “I don’t care what you do for a living,” she had replied. “I’m a boring academic too, remember. It’s what we do, Dennis, you and I, together, after five o’clock when the classrooms are locked and we’re alone.”

  “My work is my life,” had been his only reply.

  As the time wore on and she became increasingly desperate and demanding, so his patience wore thin.

  “Don’t you get it?” he growled. “I don’t want you, I don’t want anyone. I just want to be alone.”

  “There’s someone else, isn’t there?” The cliché made her cringe, but having persuaded herself that it was the truth, it still hurt.

  “No there is not, and there never will be,” he replied.

  And from there the argument went downhill all the way to the final threats.

  “If you won’t agree, I swear I’ll make you sorry.”

  “Do whatever you want,” he invited coldly. “I don’t care.”

  The sullen disinterest sent her storming from the café out into the snowy streets, with her final words ringing, she imagined, in his ears and bouncing around her head. Please your damned self. You know what happens next. After all she had done on his behalf, too.

  She charged her way through the crowded store, not knowing, not caring how many people she pushed out of her way, how many sour glances she drew from others. Out in Briggate, she shouldered aside a charity collector dressed as Santa and continued her blind, raging rush through the streets towards the Regency.

  Reaching The Headrow, outside Dorothy Perkins, she glanced back down Briggate and for a brief instant she would swear she saw Warren Kirkland ducking into Starbucks on the corner of Thornton’s Arcade. The idea that he might have been following them incensed her even more, and for a moment she thought about making her way back to Starbucks, finding him and giving him a piece of her mind, too.

  The wind pushed icy sleet into her face, slapping her cheeks as hard as Dennis’ rejection had done, and she forgot about Kirkland.

  How dare he make such a fool of her? Hadn’t he had everything he wanted in Alabama? Were her demands for some return on that physical, emotional investment, so expensive? Hadn’t she done even more for him since she came back to Britain? Wasn’t that worth the price she asked.

  Charging into the hotel, she snapped at the reception clerk. “Two-oh-seven.” No ‘please’, and when the red-haired woman handed it over there was no ‘thank you’ either. Jennifer snatched the credit card-sized, electronic key and hurried to the lift. A couple of minutes later, she emerged onto the dull red carpets of the second floor and almost ran along the corridor to her room. As she reached it, Tom Patterson emerged from 208.

  He took one look at her and concern etched itself into his malleable features. “Are you all right, Jennifer?”

  “Yes, dammit. Just leave me alone.”

  Tom appeared taken aback. “I’m sorry. I was only trying to be a good neighbour.”

  His acquiescence brought some perspective to Jennifer. She forced herself to calm down and heaved a sigh of regret. “I’m sorry, Tom. It’s been a trying afternoon.”

  “Dennis?” he asked, and she nodded. “I did try to tell you.”

  Jennifer pushed open her door and stepped in.

  Tom stood on the threshold. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  With a backward jerk of the head, she invited him in and closed the door behind him.

  Patterson seated himself at the escritoire overlooking Park Row and its blocks of solicitors’ and accountants’ offices. Jennifer opened the mini bar and pulled out a miniature Armagnac. She raised her eyebrows at Patterson and he shook his head.

  Snapping the screw cap from the bottle, she drank straight from it. “By God, that is so good.” She sneered at his owlish stare. “I feel like getting drunk.”

  “Drowning your sorrows?” Patterson asked.

  “Probably,” she reported.

  “It won’t help, Jennifer. It won’t make the problem go away. It’ll still be there tomorrow when you sober up. You have to come to terms with it now.”

  She took another slug from the bottle. “What do you know about it?” Her words came out dripping with scorn.

  “I know how it feels to be rejected,” he said, his voice as placid as hers was angry. “And I know what it feels like to lose someone.” A little sigh. “I may be Mr Boring, but that doesn’t mean I’m totally devoid of emotion.”

  “Especially when it comes to old maps.” Jennifer’s senses cleared. “Oh, I’m sorry, Tom. Here I am taking it all out on you and you’ve never been anything other than one of my best friends.”

  A little shrug this time. “Friends are there to lend a listening ear.”

  She nodded and finished the bottle. Tossing it to one side, she sat on the bed and leaned back on the mattress, her arms straight out and behind, causing her chest to thrust out and her skirt to ride up above the knee. “He has someone else,” she announced. “He won’t admit it, naturally, but I know it. I tried everything.” Tears of self-pity welled in her eyes. “Even threats to expose him for what he really is. A cheat. No good. He wouldn’t budge.”

  “Jennifer…”

  “Well I’ll show him,” she growled, cutting Patterson off. “I’ll show him just what I can do. By the time I’m through his current little tramp won’t want to know him.” The tears dried as quickly as they had begun. “You just watch me.”

  ***

  Joe, Sheila and Brenda came out of Debenhams just after 3:30 and already the fading light of afternoon had turned to dusk. Over to the west,
beyond the cloud, they could see a hint of red in the sky as the sun dipped to the horizon. The sleet had turned to light snow, some of the street traders, almost sold out, were packing away their wares, ready to call it a day. Many shoppers were making their way from Briggate through to the bus stops on Vicar Lane and Boar Lane.

  By common consent, the three companions made their way along the streets leading west off Briggate.

  Joe called into WH Smiths and came out again twenty seconds later. “Like an asylum in there,” he grumbled.

  “What is it you want, Joe?” Sheila asked.

  “Never you mind,” he retorted, and cut down a side street towards Commercial Street.

  “He’s buying gifts for us, Sheila,” Brenda remarked. “A copy of Catering Weekly for me and Meat Pies Monthly for you.”

  Joe allowed them the joke at his expense and nipped into Clinton Cards. A few minutes later, he emerged with a carrier bag containing a roll of wrapping paper and several small cards.

  “Have you seen the prices they charge? Extortion. That’s what it is. Christmas Eve, they know you don’t have time to go anywhere else, so they rip your arm off.”

  “Whining again, Joe?” Sheila asked.

  “The airline industry has a joke about Joe, you know,” Brenda said. “How do you know Joe Murray arrives by plane? The engines stop but the whining goes on.”

  The two women laughed again. Joe scowled.

  “Lighten up, Joe,” Sheila urged. “It’s Christmas.”

  “Christmas?” Joe growled. “Peppermints.”

  “You mean humbug,” Sheila corrected him.

  “I don’t like humbugs.”

  They wandered along the streets, early evening descending rapidly, the snowflakes increasing in size and density, and the crowds thinning even if they were still thronging the streets. Turning up Albion Street, where more shops awaited their attention, they stopped outside Waterstone’s, and while Joe and Brenda peered at the window display, Sheila hurried inside.

  “What’s she after now?” Joe asked.

  Brenda pointed to a stack of books and a large, freestanding poster beside it. Historian Dr Dennis Wright of the University of Alabama will be here on Wednesday December 28th, signing copies of his new book, Missing Pennies.