by Mairi Chong
They all knew in their hearts, however, that the news was bad. Everyone worked away quietly that afternoon. Less of the usual nonsense could be heard coming from the kitchen where Neil and Alex sorted their trinkets and tat. Usually, the conversation was politics, with Neil typically pronouncing loudly on his theories and beliefs and Alex starting a sentence and then being interrupted halfway through. At times, in the past, Holly had found it quite amusing to listen. Instead of the customary highbrow theatre, however, the place was quite gloomy.
The Christmas decorations were all but gone. While Holly had been off, Carol had encouraged Tricia to come in and do a massive ‘cull of stock,’ as she called it. The shop looked quite bare. But there were still some bits to be tidied, and a number of the children’s clothes to be sorted. Woollen jumpers with snowmen on the front, and baby-grows that looked like grotesque Santa suits. Goodness knows what became of it all.
Holly found the monotony of the work of little comfort that day. It was hard to believe that they were a member of staff down. Repeatedly, she caught herself frozen whilst folding some garment or other, unable to make sense of what Thomas had said. She thought about going through to the kitchen to talk to Alex and Neil, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Carol and Tricia, were speaking in hushed tones out at the front. They had been huddled there for most of the afternoon. Holly could imagine the conversation without actually listening. Since the news of Betty’s misfortune, a wave of melancholy had befallen everyone. She couldn’t understand why the thing had hit her so hard. She had cared little for the old woman and had no reason to mourn. But then, they had had a connection of sorts. Holly wondered if her final chance to find out the truth was now gone. Elizabeth. She had read that name again last night, running her fingertips over the print. It had to be a coincidence though. All the same, she was sure that Betty had known a good deal. How much, would probably always remain a mystery.
Carol had taken over the till, and it was she who first spoke with the police when they came in. Both officers were male, the two of them dressed in Hi-Viz, yellow jackets. Their radios crackled and squealed, disturbing the peace more than keeping it. They were unsurprised that the volunteers had already, albeit partially, heard the news. That was small-town gossip for you, and no secret was safe for long. The police finally confirmed their fears. Betty had been discovered dead. There wasn’t any great or gory description, not of the kind that Thomas had given anyway. From what they said though, death was unlikely to have been caused naturally.
‘Trouble,’ Neil said, poking his head out of the kitchen doorway after they had gone. ‘Knew it would be. Didn’t take them long to get down here and find us. Alex?’ he called behind him, ‘have you got an alibi sorted yet?’
Alex could be heard snorting from the kitchen.
Holly had to admire Neil’s breezy deportment. He was quite something, given that a colleague had just been confirmed dead.
‘Did they have any leads?’ asked Neil, who it seemed, was now an expert not only on politics but police investigations.
‘They didn’t say,’ replied Carol. ‘Well, they’d hardly tell me anyway, would they?’
They closed the shop of course, then and there.
That evening, Holly sat alone watching the local news. The story made second-to-top-spot, which wasn’t unexpected given the tragic nature of the event. A grave-looking police officer was interviewed briefly on television. He spoke about the current investigation being fast-paced. He urged anyone in the vicinity of the railway line by Fernibanks that previous evening, to come forward with information, no matter how small. Holly took this to mean that they had absolutely no idea what had happened that night. Why on earth the old woman had ended up down by the railway wandering about in front of trains, was anyone’s guess. If he was asking for trivial information, she suspected he would get just that. No doubt Thomas would phone up having watched the appeal, and tell them about a fresh dog shit he had stepped in as he passed by.
Holly felt sickened and turned the thing off, preferring to sit in silence. She looked around her. Her decision to come here had been impulsive, just as many of her choices had been. The greatest had undoubtedly been when she told Mr Robinson that she had made a decision. But despite never mentioning an interest in the subject before, he hadn’t seemed surprised. Having no help from home, her preparation had been eased a good deal by her chemistry teacher. He had coached her on how to write the application and primed her for the interviews. When she received a conditional offer, she had wanted to tell him first. He shook her hand. His grip was warm and strong. She had been quite determined after that. She didn’t care about the taunts in the corridor anymore, or that she invariably ate her lunch alone. This was her ticket to freedom and finding people like her. Her ‘tribe’. When she passed with straight A’s, she thought it was the proudest moment of her life. She looked down now at the scatter of papers and textbooks. She’d thrown it all away. Her one chance. What a waste. She’d let so many people down. Why had she brought all of this with her anyway? It was over. It was done.
Holly slept like the dead that night, but only after drinking herself into a near-stupor. She woke the following morning with her phone ringing, and when she answered, her heart sank further. It was Carol. The police were questioning all of the volunteers and she needed to be at the shop by ten.
As it turned out, the police weren’t there, despite Holly arriving a good half-hour late. The rest of the volunteers were waiting though. Carol had busied herself and was lining up the least offensive mugs in the kitchen. It was Alex who was sent out front to open the door for her when she knocked.
‘Not late, am I?’ Holly asked hopefully, and Alex, to whom she had not in the past perhaps given enough time, grinned and told her that Carol was having kittens.
They walked together through to the back. The shop was only dimly lit from the light in the kitchen, which shone a path through the shadowy mannequins and clothes rails.
‘Carol doesn’t want to attract customers,’ Alex explained.
As they entered the kitchen, Carol turned from the kettle. Holly wondered if she was about to do her fainting trick again because she looked pale and haggard. Probably anaemic or something, she considered.
‘Thank God for that,’ Carol said dramatically.
Holly exchanged a look with Alex, her new conspirator.
‘That’s everyone then,’ Carol said. ‘I think it should all be straightforward enough. No need for anyone to worry and if there’s a question you don’t know the answer to …’
‘Miss it out and come back to it at the end of the exam,’ Holly quipped. Neil and Alex guffawed, but Carol looked as po-faced as ever. Tricia, who held a dishcloth, wrung it enthusiastically, presumably wishing it was Holly’s neck. Holly smiled jovially at Carol.
‘You’re not going to say silly things,’ Carol stated.
‘Am I not?’ Holly asked. Her head was thumping with a hangover, but she wasn’t going to show weakness in front of any of them.
It felt as if there had been a shift in dynamic since Betty had died. Carol’s repeated attempts to take control of the situation had fallen flat. The so-called manager ran a forefinger over the line of her eyebrow. Back and forth once, then twice, and catching herself, she dropped her hand by her side as if she knew she’d been seen.
‘Did you watch the news last night?’ Holly asked the room.
Both Neil and Alex said that they had.
‘Feels just like all those years ago. It’s happening all over again,’ Neil said, now comfortable in his self-appointed position of criminal expert having witnessed a violent death before, albeit a bloody lifetime ago. Holly couldn’t abide the man and his supercilious demeanour, so she turned away. She was sure that Alex had noticed.
Having automatically made up everyone’s usuals, Carol and Tricia began to hand around the mugs.
‘Should we wait?’ asked Tricia.
‘What for? It’s not as if we’
re sitting down to a slap-up meal with the police,’ Neil said. Holly wondered if he was beginning to tire of the damn place as much as her. He raised his mug and the coffee slopped high up the side, spilling over slightly. ‘Cheers. To Betty, God rest her soul,’ he said. He pretended that his hand hadn’t been scalded by the hot liquid, but Holly watched him for a minute and saw him rub it on his horrible corduroys, and then look at the side of his finger.
There was a definite sense of unease as they sipped their drinks, each one of them listening for the knock on the front door. Neil couldn’t help himself. He was born to fill awkward silences and he fell back onto his rehearsed witticism once again.
‘How’re everyone’s alibis looking then?’ he said, placing his mug now on the wooden counter. No one answered, but Tricia smiled out of loyalty. Neil wasn’t put off though. Presumably, he had lived a lifetime, making wise-cracks only to have them fall flat like cowpats.
‘You got a good story?’ he said, turning to Holly probably having spotted that she was out on a limb and not part of Carol’s inner circle.
‘I have no defence whatsoever,’ she said. ‘If they try to pin it on me, I can’t argue. I was at home all night, but with nobody to corroborate my story, I can’t prove a thing. I, though, had no reason to wish ill of Betty,’ she said.
‘What, and you’re saying anyone else might?’ Tricia suddenly said.
Holly turned to face her, taken aback. ‘No Tricia, I think you know I wasn’t saying that. I didn’t think foul play was suspected at all, but you know what they say about a guilty conscience …’ she left it hanging.
Tricia didn’t disappoint, throwing the dishcloth down on the sink top and pushing past Neil and Alex who had blocked the doorway. Poor Alex had been mid-sip, and as she flounced from the room, she jogged his arm and caused him to leap back away from the hot liquid. The coffee landed with a splash on the floor.
‘We’ll all be in A and E at this rate with third-degree burns,’ Holly laughed.
The police arrived forty minutes later than they were meant to. By that time, Neil had become even more blasé, but Tricia was pacing the room and was clearly dying to get the whole interview palaver over and done with. Holly’s stomach had taken on the hollow ache well-known to all who have ever over-indulged in alcohol. Fearing that her blood sugars were dropping too rapidly, she took a couple of biscuits from the tin and ate them meditatively while the policemen introduced themselves.
It was two officers once again, but this pair appeared more like high-flying businessmen, in relaxed but expensive suits. A whiff of masculine aftershave caught at Holly’s throat as they entered the room, and she had to force the residue of biscuit crumbs over her gullet in a painful gulp. From their accents, it was clear that they were not from these parts. Holly thought that they must have been called in especially. Perhaps the local plod wasn’t up to the job.
The senior detective introduced himself first, and then his colleague. He apologised for their delay. There was a murmur of understanding from Carol and Tricia, something Holly found detestably hypocritical given that five minutes before, the two women had been cursing their tardiness.
It seemed that they wanted to talk to anyone who had been working on the day that Betty had died, who might presumably have spoken with her in the shop and heard something indicating her state of mind. To Holly, this sounded a little far-fetched, but she supposed that they had to tick their boxes.
‘Do you think she jumped then?’ she asked when the detective had stopped the preliminaries.
The policeman closest to her turned. ‘We’re not making any assumptions. The postmortem will tell us more, but that is one definite line of inquiry.’
Holly thought that it was all rather odd. An old woman would hardly choose to die that way. She remembered Betty’s hospital visits and wondered if the police knew something more. Had Betty been suffering from some incurable illness? Might this have been a motive to jump? Still, Holly thought it highly unlikely.
Carol had arranged some chairs and the fan heater in the back room. This was where they planned to speak to the volunteers in turn. Holly supposed that if any of them looked suspicious, they might take them down the station for a beating, or harsh questioning, or whatever form of interrogation the police force employed these days.
She was first up, not that she minded. They sat facing one another, all friendly and civil, with no mention of thumbscrews or waterboards. Holly’s hangover was now long-forgotten. She rested back in the chair, determined to enjoy what was to come. They took down her name and address. She made a couple of gags about the weather or something. She told them from the start that she couldn’t help them, that she was meant to have been passing through this God-forsaken town herself, but had ended up staying on longer. The senior detective, who she thought was called David, nodded as if he completely agreed with this sentiment. They asked about the charity shop, and Holly told them that she wasn’t in paid employment currently due to ill-health, but that she had wanted to remain active and to give back something to the community whilst she was off sick. This little line pleased her a good deal, and she reminisced about it all that afternoon, chuckling to herself. There wasn’t an awful lot more to say. Holly told them that she knew nothing of Betty’s circumstances and what with Betty being far older, they naturally hadn’t conversed much in the shop.
‘So, have you got any real idea as to what happened?’ Holly asked as the men shifted, apparently close to ending the interview.
‘We’re keeping an open mind. It’s very early days,’ the man David said.
‘Do you think someone else might have been involved? Is that why you’re asking questions?’
‘It’s unlikely, but certainly a possibility,’ he said.
‘Like an enemy?’ Holly asked. ‘I don’t understand though,’ she went on. ‘Why would she go down there? She can’t have been dragged to the railway. Someone would have seen, and if you’re thinking she killed herself, why choose that horrible way to die?’
David looked a little miffed, and Holly sensed that the air grew slightly frostier despite the fan heater blasting away in their faces.
‘No preconceived ideas,’ he said shortly. ‘We haven’t found any CCTV yet to trace her movements. Unfortunately, the town has few security cameras in operation, and certainly none down the end where they might have been useful. We’re speaking door-to-door but …’
He didn’t need to say any more. Holly understood. The neighbours were all of a similar age and highly unlikely to have seen or heard anything of any use. Even if they had, they would make appalling witnesses.
‘Would it have been quick?’ Holly asked, turning back as she reached the door.
‘Very,’ the detective answered.
Holly nodded. It was a little solace, all the same.
13
Having hung around waiting to be dismissed following the interviews, Holly couldn’t simply go back to her flat and stew. After what they had told her about Betty’s end being so abrupt and brutal, she needed to be outside, and oddly, she wanted to be close to Betty. It was just past lunchtime but she had no appetite. The streets were crowded with shoppers, who despite the inevitable overindulgence over Christmas, seemed determined to adhere to a routine and buy their usual steak pie for a Thursday evening meal, or sausage roll for lunch at the butchers.
As she walked past the enormous glass window, she happened to glance in and see the man, white-coated and capped, raising his cleaver to some unknown meat. He hacked at it expertly, cutting it into more manageable portions. It was pink and glistening, and as he cut, he revealed a blushing inner.
Holly thought of poor, withered Betty, and with almost immediate self-disgust, pondered if she had looked the same. Holly wondered if the old woman had been complicit in her death. Had the end been swift, or had she been afraid? Had she cried out, or been still? Holly shook her head and plunged her hands deep into her pockets.
The bottom end of the high street was grid
locked. A delivery driver was attempting a three-point-turn in too narrow a space. The exhaust vapours billowed and clouded in the cool winter air. She had already noticed that some of the cars that had been parked there overnight still had white windscreens.
The delivery driver finally made a good job of it but received an indignant toot from the car first in line. A neighbouring pedestrian, who had been walking the other way, and now parallel with her, jumped in exaggerated alarm. It was only then, that Holly realised that it was Thomas, the man with a learning disability who had broken the news of Betty’s demise.
His figure was stooped, like that of a far older person, with his jacket hanging loose and dishevelled around his shoulders.
‘Aye, aye,’ he said, which to be fair, was his customary greeting.
‘Thomas,’ she said. ‘What are you up to then?’ She didn’t say it in an accusatory tone at all, but being as literally-minded as he was, he took it to be so.
‘Nothing. I’m allowed to be here, aren’t I? Just walking about. The police aren’t after me. I’ve been in for my breakfast at Shirley’s.’ (This was one of the local teashops in town.) ‘And I was coming down to see if you were open.’
‘Obviously, we’re not. How could we be after what’s happened?’ Holly said rather unkindly.
Thomas shrugged, and she knew she had worried him because he began running the zip to his jacket up and down, as he always did when he was anxious. She felt a pang of remorse.