‘There’s people in them rooms now.’
‘Yes, but he was here a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Know how many rooms I clean up in this place?’
‘I’m sure you’re very busy,’ I said. ‘Look, when someone leaves at short notice, and leaves their stuff behind, what do you do with it?’
‘No one here has stuff worth leaving about,’ she chuckled. ‘What you think this place is here, The Ritz Hotel?’
‘What about dead people then?’
‘You say this man was dead? I thought you said he went to hospital.’
‘What happens to the personal effects of people who die in here? I work for the Coroner’s Office. We have to make sure the possessions are logged and returned to the next of kin.’
‘But you said this man wasn’t dead.’
‘No, he isn’t.’ I sighed. ‘But he isn’t well. There must be some procedure for storing things.’
‘Sure, if there’s something to store.’
‘Good, so where do you store them?’
‘In the lockers.’
‘And can you show me?’
‘There’s nothing stored from those there rooms. I know.’
‘Well there wouldn’t have been much. I don’t think he had any luggage.’ I cleared my throat. ‘He had a carrier bag, a Tesco carrier. There was a cardboard box inside, maybe a radio.’ She nodded. ‘You remember that?’
‘A Tesco carrier bag, what you think I am, darling, some kind of psychic?’
‘I know you must clean a lot of rooms, but …’
‘The rubbish gets thrown away.’
‘You threw it away?’
‘I’m not saying that. You can come and see, come here.’ She shoved the machine aside and pulled a bunch of keys from her overall pocket. I followed her into a cleaning annexe where a row of lockers stood above the mops and buckets and the bottle of Jeyes Fluid. ‘This is where we put anything that looks as though it could be wanted. Here, see for yourself.’
I peered into each locker as she opened up. In one was a box of dominoes, in another a watch with a rubber strap and cracked face. The final one yielded a transistor radio. ‘This may be his,’ I said, fingering it. ‘You know which room it came from?’
‘Not sure.’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s his. Is this all?’
‘You see anything else you want?’
‘I’ll give you a receipt for it,’ I said indignantly, but she laughed and waved me away.
‘You take it, darling. Put something in the charity box.’
‘You are quite sure this is all?’
‘You think I’m a thief or something?’
‘There was a Tesco carrier with this,’ I said doggedly. ‘In it was a box from the crematorium. It contained some ashes.’
‘Lord have mercy!’ The woman recoiled and crossed herself three times.
‘You threw them away.’ I smiled at her reproachfully. ‘It probably looked like rubbish, an easy mistake.’
‘Lord have mercy!’ She sat down on a step stool. ‘Who puts ashes in a Tesco bag?’
‘The Coroner’s department, that’s who. They were his mother’s ashes.’
The woman passed her hand across her face. ‘God, that’s awful,’ she said. ‘That is just awful, awful.’ But then she looked at me, defiant. ‘Some terrible things go on in this place. I could tell some stories.’
‘I’m not suggesting they got thrown away on purpose,’ I began. But of course they had been thrown away on purpose, the purpose being waste disposal. ‘At least his radio got stored.’
‘I didn’t clean that room.’ She stood up. ‘I don’t remember cleaning that room. It wasn’t my shift. You’ll have to ask Milena. She comes in tomorrow.’
‘What’s the point if they’re not here? I don’t suppose there’s any chance they’d still be in the bins?’ I said, although I didn’t really want to go there.
‘Rubbish gets emptied every Thurdsay,’ she told me. ‘How long ago did you say he was here?’
‘A couple of days, not even that, about two weeks ago.’
‘No way.’ She was pushing me out of the door now. ‘You people should have got here earlier,’ she said. ‘You should have told the manager what was in that box. The management here’s no good. They never tell us anything, except work harder.’
‘I’ve got the radio,’ I said, smiling hard at her. ‘You’ve been a great help, thanks.’
‘Wait there, you said you’d give me a receipt for that.’
‘Oh, yes.’ I rummaged in my bag for a scrap of paper and a pen and wrote down on it: Transistor radio, white. I signed the chit and added the date. The concierge scowled at me as I passed through the reception door. He didn’t even ask me if I’d had any joy.
***
Chapter 19
It was already nearly five, so I took a taxi to Queen Mary’s Gardens, wondering if he would still be there. What person in their right mind would be doing this, I wondered? But what person in their right mind would go chasing after a schizophrenic who’d fantasised about killing his mother? Chas wouldn’t, Cass wouldn’t, nor would Dr Veil. Any reasonable person would let this lie.
He was sitting on the fixed stone bench in the arbour at the north end of the rose garden. His face was red as ever, but frozen in a sort of painted hardness, and the cap at his side was empty. I walked up to the seat and sat beside him. He nodded, without looking up at me.
‘I’ve been watching that spider,’ he said, lifting his large red hand to indicate a jewelled web on one of the rose bushes. ‘Just slaughtered that fly, you see? He’s wrapping it up?’
‘Nature is red in tooth and claw,’ I opined.
‘A spider’s subtle,’ Roy said. ‘Think it’s a he or a she?’
‘I guess you want me to say she? The female’s deadlier than the male.’
He laughed. ‘No flies on you, Louise, and no mistake.’
‘I’ve managed to get your radio,’ I said. ‘I got you some batteries too. Four for a pound on Camden Market. I hope they’re not duds.’
‘You’re a star.’ He looked at the radio in wonder as I held it out to him.
‘You’re sleeping here again then?’ I said, looking round at the gardens.
‘Here and there. I’m saving up to go to Liverpool.’
‘Oh really?’
‘Yeah. They’re opening John’s house as a museum. Yoko Ono gave it to The National Trust.’
‘That’ll be something to see,’ I said, trying a smile on him. He seemed positive enough this afternoon. He hadn’t mentioned his rejected confession yet, nor asked about the missing carrier.
‘I spoke to Mr Byrne about the flower,’ I said. ‘You can choose your site in the memorial garden.’
‘I’ve already chosen it.’ He pointed over to the pruned back rose beds. ‘Right in the centre, there.’
‘No, not there,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m afraid it’s a non starter, Roy. I meant the garden of remembrance. It’s a lovely spot, most appropriate.’
‘I said I wanted it here.’ His face grew a deeper shade of red. ‘That was the arrangement.’
‘We had no arrangement,’ I said, watching the shadows draw in. They would lock the park at dusk. I would have to be quick.
‘My mam always said I’d let her down,’ he said gloomily. He picked up a penny from the upturned cap that lay on the seat on the other side of him and threw it at the web. ‘That scuttles you, you bastard,’ he spat. ‘Never did like spiders.’
‘Do you sleep in here?’ I asked, looking for a shelter in the garden. Four degrees in the night, the weather forecast had said, and falling.
‘You’re a day tripper, Louise,’ he said softly. ‘One way ticket, yeah. It took me long enough to find out. I thought you’d come and see me. I was in The Nunnery for nearly a week. I asked about you. We had an arrangement.’
‘Dr Veil told me not to go near the place,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Roy. I would have come if I’d known.
I was going to call them this week, but I’ve been away in Devon. My boyfriend’s sister’s partner died.’ I gagged on this ridiculous mouthful of tags.
‘I never knew you had a boyfriend. Took me halfway there now, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I bristled. ‘That’s not fair. Just tell me what you want, Roy.’
‘I want a rose,’ he said. ‘I want a rose in my mother’s name. Do her the honours.’
‘You can have that,’ I said. ‘Come with me to the memorial garden, I’ll show you.’
‘No. I want a public planting, not a shove it in the hole and pretend it isn’t there kind of thing. I want everybody to know what it’s planted for. They never took care of her properly.’
‘It was all done by the book. A bit rushed,’ I added, ‘but she was given a decent funeral.’ I groped for words, desperate to keep him off the subject of the ashes. ‘Look, I said I would make enquiries. You asked me to chase things up with Hammond House. I’ve got your radio.’
‘And the rest?’ He had remembered the Tesco bag.
‘I left it somewhere safe,’ I lied quickly. ‘You know, till we firm things up.’ And what was I going to do about that now, I thought? Substitute some other ashes? The box and the bag would not be hard to source. I brightened. ‘Look, Roy, the best thing is to plant the rose where I’ve said and put this all behind you now. I’m sorry about the other thing – well, no, I’m not. I’m not sorry the police dismissed it. I think that’s for the best. It’s for the best they let you out now, isn’t it, without being stuck with that label?’
He laughed. ‘I’m stuck with it and that’s a fact. It’s the way of the world, Louise. Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat. Looks like I’ll be spending it in here now.’
‘I’ve got some contacts. Maybe I can sort you something out with Social Services.’ But they should be sorting Roy out as a matter of course, I thought. It was outrageous Veil could turn him out like this, to fend for himself. ‘What about this trip to Liverpool?’ I asked. ‘Sounds good to me. You know, I could help you out with the fare perhaps …’
‘So many of us,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘We’re like flies caught in a trap. What happened to the box then?’
I was quiet, dreaming up some story about the management of Hammond House having a three minute silence for Edith before scattering her ashes over some pretty municipal garden. But Roy would never buy it.
‘They threw them out, didn’t they?’
‘I told you they were somewhere safe,’ I said helplessly.
‘I asked the police to go and get them. You know, for forensic tests.’
‘Ah?’ I was caught like a fly in a trap.
‘They thought I flew out of the cuckoo’s nest. In and out again. Never mind, we’ll get them later.’ He was fiddling with the transistor. Maybe he didn’t mind too much about the ashes after all. I did though. I thought of Gustav, in his zinc-lined coffin, preserved in a beautiful repose until such a time as someone removed the stone of the catafalque and let in air. That would deflate him all right, the pompous fraud. And then I thought of Edith, dumped on the mortuary floor in a dirty sheet, her body volatilised into the air of north London, her last remains thrown onto the municipal dump in a soggy box. I minded then. I minded very much.
‘Tell me what really happened Roy,’ I said.
‘I told you.’
‘No, I don’t think you did.’
‘I used to watch her, you know,’ he said. ‘I’d let myself in with my key and …’
‘You had a key to your mother’s flat?’
‘Yeah. I took it from her bag one time she wasn’t watching and made myself a copy. Anyway, I used to let myself in. Sometimes I’d nick her meals-on-wheels money.’ He glared at me defiantly. ‘That’s a scandal, you know, that meals-on-wheels. One time I went round there and she was in bed coughing her guts up, and in the kitchen was all these meals-on-wheels boxes, untouched. She used to lay out rows of pound coins for the blokes to take the payment for them.’
‘You mean the meals-on-wheels people had a key as well?
‘I suppose so.’
‘How many other people had a key?’
‘I don’t know. Does it matter? I was the one what did it.’ He smiled at me.
‘I don’t believe you, Roy,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe you killed your mum. I think you wanted to because she drove you mad – whose mother doesn’t drive them mad? – but I don’t think you killed her.’
‘Well, what the fuck do you know?’ he said, waving his arms about suddenly. I saw a police officer walk smartly towards us. Where had he come from?
‘On your way, Roy,’ he said, rocking backwards and forwards on his thick soles.
‘He has nowhere to go,’ I said.
‘That’s not my problem. On your way, please. Where are you heading, madam?’
‘Camden Town.’
‘You’d best be heading on then. Come on, Roy, I’ll walk you as far as the Diorama. Your mate’s down the Broadwalk there. He was digging bulbs just now.’
‘What mate’s this then?’ I asked, but Roy was picking up his cap and preparing to follow the officer. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ I said. ‘We’ll work it out about the rose, right?’
I watched the officer escort him as far as the gate, feeling I should have intervened more. After all, it was a free country, the benches were for everybody, even Roy. If the police didn’t think his confession of murder a crime, then why treat him like a reprobate for sitting quietly on a park bench?
I reached the Outer Circle and picked up a taxi to my house, crossing the cab that Cassie had just got out of as it turned around. I caught up with her as she was going down the steps.
‘Oh,’ she said, startled. ‘I’m early, I know. I’m glad I caught you.’
She was tanned and thinner than she was when we had parted for the summer recess. ‘You know I’m devastated about Gus Schneller,’ she said, handing me a bottle of wine as we went into my kitchen. ‘I rang some friends. They’d been to the funeral too. They said it was very dignified. It’s such a waste. He had so much to give.’
She showed me some photographs of the institute in Kerala where she spent three months of the year. ‘He was out there with us in June,’ she said, which was the busiest time for Chas’s sister, B & B wise. ‘We used to have supper together. He was a wise and wonderful man.’
I occupied myself with uncorking the bottle of wine. ‘I didn’t know him all that well,’ I said, wondering if I should tell about the secret drug-taking. Gus had preached purity of body and mind while poisoning heart and liver with amphetamine and booze. But it surprised me that he’d pulled the wool over Cassie’s eyes. She was usually so tuned in to people’s foibles. Perhaps she was a devotee. If so, she didn’t need to know the truth, I thought. Why disenchant her? Maybe that was Gus’s special gift, bringing friendship and light to normally disenchanted people, like Cass was, which was giving a lot in a way. ‘I saw Roy Woods just now,’ I said, to remind her why I so urgently needed to speak to her. ‘You know, the son of the case I told you about?’
‘What d’you mean you saw him, Louise?’ she asked stupidly. ‘You had a meeting with him?’
‘I went to find him in the park,’ I sighed. ‘He wrote to me, asking if I’d picked up his bits and pieces from Hammond House. Here, read it.’ Roy’s letter on brown paper was still on the table. I pushed it over to her.
‘He knows where you live then,’ she said, glancing at it and handing it back to me. ‘You really should refer this on, Louise. You shouldn’t be dealing with this man.’
‘Who do I refer him on to? His psychiatrist has washed his hands of him, the police don’t want to know. Although they may be keeping an eye on him – an officer walked him out of the park just now.’
‘But going to meet him like this, you’re establishing some kind of relationship with the man. Is that a good idea?’
‘I told you, I befriended him.’ I poured her some wi
ne. ‘If someone comes round to your house to tell you they murdered their mother, I’d say that was establishing a pretty strong relationship.’
‘Would you?’ She looked narrowly at me. ‘I’d say it was a piece of information.’
‘Some information.’
‘So you process it,’ she said. ‘You take it to the right channels.’
‘I did, I told you, and they didn’t want to know.’
‘Look, Louise, you’re one of the best students I’ve had. Your skills are excellent, maybe that’s why …’ She looked as though she was thinking that one over. ‘But there are just no boundaries here, and that worries me. You’ve no right to befriend this man.’
‘No right? What right do you need to befriend someone?’
‘But he’s the son of one of your cases. There should be boundaries. It’s a sad fact of life that he has nowhere else to go. This so-called Care in the Community policy makes me want to throw a brick through the Department of Health and Social Security sometimes. There never used to be this amount of homeless on the streets, not mentally ill ones anyway – but there is nothing you can do. Befriending this Roy won’t help either of you in the long run. Think about it, you go on seeing him, go on building a relationship with him and then what? What happens next?’
‘I’m not thinking of running away with him Cass, for God’s sake.’
‘Fine,’ she nodded. ‘What about him?’
That pulled me up. Roy had paid me compliments, it was true, compliments that might be construed as a come on. He had bridled when I mentioned Chas, even accusing me of – what was it? – being a one way ticket? You took me half the way there, yeah. God forbid that he should think of getting embroiled with me.
‘I want to help him get a memorial for his mother,’ I said finally. ‘Then he can have some closure. It’s a long story, Cass, but basically I think we rushed her off to be cremated far too soon. I knew she had a son, and that he was mentally ill, but I wanted the case off my hands. I didn’t want to be bothered with him. Then he turned up and was naturally very upset about the circumstances, and then he told me he’d killed his mother.’
‘Which no one else seems to believe, so why should you?’
Grave Truths Page 16
