Quick and the Dead

by Susan Moody

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to two of them …’ Both of them proving more congenial than I would have expected. ‘… but the third – Seamus, wasn’t it? – I don’t where to start looking for him.’

  ‘Just a mo, I’ll ask Miranda.’ He put a hand over the receiver. I could hear a foggy sort of colloquy taking place. Then Lewis came back. ‘Apparently he works on the cruise ships, which is where Amy met him.’

  ‘Ships?’ I said.

  ‘Well, Miranda, who knows more about such things than I do, says that the staff on these ships are only contracted for a season at a time so they move around. If they’re not taken on by one ship, they probably will be by another. She says he was on one called L’Oriana for a couple of seasons and then she lost touch. We’re going back about seven or eight years here … he could be anywhere by now.’

  I thought it interesting that the assistant, with her first-class degree from Oxford, knew so much about an author’s husbands, but it was none of my business. ‘Seamus what?’ I asked.

  More hand-covered mumblings. Then he returned. ‘O’Donahue. That’s the best we can come up with.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You – and, of course, your assistant – have been most helpful.’

  Seamus O’Donahue: he sounded like a good ol’ Irish boy. I got onto my computer and Googled the name. There were dozens of them. I narrowed the search to London. There were still a lot of them. I tried P&O, but could see no way to access their personnel, though no doubt someone more tech-savvie than I was wouldn’t have had a problem.

  Where would you want to live if you worked on the ships? Dover? Southampton? Portsmouth? Since many of the P&O cruises departed from Southampton, I Googled the white pages. There were four O’Donahues. One was T. One was C. Two were S. I dialled the first one: no answer. I dialled the second. After some time, a woman with a thick Dublin accent answered. I could hear the screams of a baby in the background, the moronic sound of a TV, the shouts of two kids who sounded as if they were jumping over the furniture.

  ‘I’m looking for Mr O’Donahue,’ I said.

  ‘And who would yez be?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s in connection with the death of his former wife,’ I said.

  ‘There’s been no former wife, not in this house there hasn’t. Anyways, you’ll no’ be able to speak to Sean, him bein’ away with the ships to Spain an’ Italy an’ such-like.’

  ‘Sean? I was looking for Seamus.’

  ‘Seamus? That’d likely be Sean’s brother.’ She coughed wetly. ‘But he’s long gone from here. Went away to London, must be more than five years now.’

  ‘I thought he worked on the cruise ships?’

  ‘Aye, he did so. Kevin, stop that now or I’ll feckin’ skin yez alive,’ she shrieked, straight into my ear. ‘But he decided to look for work elsewhere. Which was good for us, since he handed over his job to Sean.’

  ‘And you don’t know where he lives now?’

  ‘I do so. Jus’ let me think.’ There was a longish pause while she thought. Then she said, ‘Would it be some place called Bricksin?’

  ‘Very possibly.’ Did she mean Brixton?

  ‘Or, no, tell a lie, it’s Ruskin. Near a park, I’m thinking, somewhere there.’

  Behind her, a child started to scream, and was immediately joined by its sibling. Before she could put down the phone, I asked swiftly, ‘Where is Seamus working now?’

  ‘That would be in the supermarket. Morrisons.’ She started laughing. ‘Same as that feckin’ bitch the poor soul married all those years ago.’ More screaming. Something fell and broke. She took a deep breath, preparatory to emitting a super-loud screech towards the culprit.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ I said, and quickly cut the call.

  A search on the internet led me to a branch of Morrisons near somewhere I’d never heard of called Ruskin Park. I climbed into my car and set off for south-east London, knowing that at least there would be plenty of parking when I got there.

  I found pretty much the usual supermarket layout, even though this was supposed to be a step up from your more down-market retail outlets. Fresh bread smells wafting from the bakery department. Ground coffee over by the beverages. A central pen holding a mound of melons. Christmas carols streamed gently over the intercom, interrupted now and again by staff announcements or reminders of what a bargain customers would find if they went to the ready-meal shelves.

  I accosted a young guy dragging a trolley of squashed-down cardboard cartons which had once held bottles of window-cleaning fluid. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, stopping in his path. ‘Where can I find Seamus O’Donahue?’

  He looked around, though owing to the way the shelves were placed, he can’t have seen much beyond where he was standing. ‘Dunno. Haven’t seen him in ages.’

  ‘Does he live far from here?’ I had deliberately chosen one of the more imbecilic-looking personnel, knowing I’d have more chance of squeezing an address out of him than from one of the savvier people. Funny that out of the three, two of Amy Morrison’s husbands worked in a supermarket. Should I make anything out of that or had she simply found it a fruitful cruising ground?

  ‘Just roun’ the corner, downa road,’ the moron said. ‘There’s some modern-type town houses somewhere ’long there.’

  ‘And he lives in one?’

  Perhaps belatedly remembering he shouldn’t be giving out personal details of the staff to any Tom, Quick or Harry who came asking, he shrugged but didn’t speak. Which I took to mean ‘yes’.

  Just roun’ the corner and downa road proved to be a slog across the park, round several corners and up a slight hill. But there indeed was a row of flat-faced houses with miniature railed spaces in front of them. Some contained a bush, one had a tiny windmill, three dwarfs frolicked in a third.

  How to find Seamus O’Donahue? Trial and error seemed the best way. I stepped up to a door at random and rang the bell. Nobody came. I pressed again. I went down the very short path to the pavement and approached the house next door. As I raised my hand to knock, the door opened and an elderly lady came out and stood on the step.

  ‘Can I help you?’ She had a middle-European accent and hair that had recently been given a blue rinse. A little less blue and a bit more rinse would have been a good idea. Through her front window I could see three other women sitting at a table, each holding a fan of cards in their hands.

  ‘I’m sorry to be interrupting your bridge game,’ I said, indicating her three friends. ‘I was looking for Seamus O’Donahue.’

  ‘Ach, Seamus,’ she said, lips curving upwards. ‘Soch a sveetheart.’

  ‘Really?’ From what Donald Lewis had said, or at least implied, he was a wife-beater and a drunk.

  ‘So kind to old ladies like me,’ she went on, her accent growing stronger. ‘So kind.’

  I began to wonder if she had been hitting the sherry bottle. Or I’d got the wrong Seamus. ‘Where would I find him?’

  ‘He is at nomber 154,’ she said. ‘Alvays these ladies are coming to wisit him. Many ladies.’

  ‘What sort of ladies?’

  ‘Alvays vith this yellow hair, alvays the bright colours, alvays these lovely velvet caps – berets – like in history, Good King Venceslas and so on.’

  Before I could properly process the unexpected insertion into the conversation of the Saint with the heated footprints, inside the house someone called plaintively, ‘Irina!’, giving the word a wonderfully guttural Russian inflection.

  ‘Does he ever talk about his ex-wife?’ I asked swiftly.

  ‘This hell-cat vooman? Often he talks of her. And now someone has kilt her, I believe. He vas very unhappy with this news.’

  ‘Still carrying a torch, eh?’

  ‘A torch? I do not know from torches.’ She raised a hand to her forehead and to my horror I saw a faint line of blue numbers tattooed on the inside of her wrist. There was another cry of ‘Irina!’

  ‘I’m sorry to have interrupted you,’ I
said again, and stepped back and then down to the pavement as she closed the door. By now, her friends had left their seats and were peering at me out of the window. I gave them a big smile and a wave and they nodded back at me. I wondered if all of them were, like their hostess, survivors of the Nazi death-camps. And what horror stories they could tell. I knew that many of those who had endured Auschwitz and Buchenwald had never spoken of their time behind the high fences.

  Walking slowly down to number 154, I considered what Irina had just told me. Yellow hair, bright colours, velvet caps – it sounded as though Amy Morrison was still visiting her former husband, despite their divorce. Not to mention her two subsequent husbands. And as I reached number 154, I realized with a sense of shock that the description I had been given – yellow hair, bright colours, velvet beret – might equally apply to Dr Helena Drummond. Not that I’d ever seen Helena in a velvet beret. Nor could I imagine Good King Wenceslas in one.

  Was there some kind of connection between my collaborator, her former student, and that student’s ex-husband? I stepped up the path and pushed the bell-stop set beside the door. Then looked up at a brass ship’s bell hanging from a chain above it. Should I have rung that instead? It might be some kind of fire alarm, alerting the entire street, bringing agitated householders out of their houses, sniffing for smoke or—

  The door opened. One of the best-looking men I’d ever seen stood eyeballing me. Black hair, deep blue eyes, a complexion to die for, barbered eyebrows. I hate really handsome men because they are almost always deeply aware of their assets, don’t mind sharing them with you, and are convinced that you agree with them that they are God’s gift to the sisterhood. Like, sure.

  I didn’t bother with a preamble. Men like Seamus O’Donahue usually dived straight in so why shouldn’t I? ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I said briskly.

  ‘Loss? Oh, you mean Amy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He stepped out of the door and looked up and down, surveying the street. What for? ‘You’d best come in,’ he said. Which I did.

  He led me to the back of the house and into a kitchen so clean I was almost afraid to set foot on the gleaming floor tiles for fear of sullying them. I made a mental note never to invite him into my own kitchen, in case he fainted dead away from the shock. There was a dim aroma of bleach, overlaid by the scent of proper coffee. ‘Sit down and tell me what this is all about,’ he said. ‘Coffee?’ He sounded considerably more educated than his sister-in-law; any Irish accent had been reduced to a lilt that I’m sure worked on the ladies like a charm.

  I was glad I had put on a sensible navy suit and a good white shirt. He had obviously taken me for a police officer.

  He placed a bone china cup and saucer in front of me and sat down himself. ‘You’re obviously not a police officer,’ he said.

  Drat! And here I thought I could pass. ‘I used to be.’

  ‘And what are you now?’

  ‘An art historian,’ I said.

  ‘And as a colleague of my former wife, you’ve come to pay your respects, is that it?’

  ‘More or less.’ If this guy worked in a supermarket, I was Queen Marie of Romania. Unless he ran the place. Or even owned it. Not that I have anything at all against supermarket staff, friendly and courteous to a man – or woman – it was just that Seamus’s manner was that of one used to being in control, not one who was controlled.

  ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘Quite simply, because my close friend and colleague is being fingered for Amy’s death, and I need to clear her name by finding the real culprit.’

  ‘And who is she?’

  ‘Another art historian. Doctor Helena Drummond.’

  His face changed. ‘Is that so?’ He sounded as smooth as face cream. Which I was prepared to bet he used liberally on his own face. But it was obvious that in one way or another, and however tenuously, he was connected with Helena. Or had been once.

  ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I understand she used to come and visit you here,’ I said, taking a punt.

  He smiled, leaned away from the table and hooked one arm over the back of his chair. ‘Do you indeed? Whatever gave you that idea?’

  This interview was getting away from me. ‘I have my sources.’

  ‘And would one of them be Mrs Koszklovsky down the road, by any chance?’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter, does it?’ I didn’t want to get the old lady into trouble – though she had called him a ‘sveetheart’.

  ‘For your information, I do not know Doctor Helena Drummond. Nor have I ever met her. But I do know the name because at one point, she tutored my wife. Former wife. Amy.’

  ‘Who, from what I’ve heard, was not the world’s most popular woman. All I want to know is whether you’re aware of anyone in particular who had it in for her.’

  ‘Like me, for instance, do you mean?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You didn’t need to, darlin’.’ He reached across the table and lightly touched the back of my hand. I hated the way I couldn’t suppress a tingle from walking down my backbone. ‘But for the record, I was visiting my parents in Kilkenny – it was their golden wedding anniversary – at the time Amy died, according to the newspapers, that is, and there’s a score of witnesses will back me up.’

  ‘So if not you, then who?’

  ‘There was someone who sent anonymous letters threatening her. That was while we were still together, years ago. And before you ask, no, I didn’t keep them, and I have no idea whether she did.’

  ‘Where did they come from?’

  ‘The only one I saw was sent from Boston. The one in the United States.’

  ‘Did she have any idea who might have sent them?’

  ‘If she did, she didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Not even whether it was a man or a woman?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What did they threaten her with?’

  ‘Death, possibly.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘So basically, you can’t help me.’

  ‘I’d like to but …’ He wrinkled his smooth brow. ‘I seem to remember her talking about some disgruntled ex-boyfriend, though I’d be willing to take a guess that most of them were disgruntled by the time she’d finished with them. But that was a while ago, maybe ten years, and it may not have had anything to do with the letters. If it’s him, he’s certainly been biding his time.’

  ‘Maybe the opportunity wasn’t ripe until now.’ I lifted my coffee cup. I could see the shape of my fingers through the delicate porcelain. ‘So where did you meet Ms Morrison?’

  ‘On a cruise to the Mediterranean. She was there with some rich old codger and his two daughters.’ He looked at me with a wry expression. ‘I only discovered he was her husband some years after we tied the knot. Which made me Number Two – and believe me, darlin’, that’s one of the very few times I’ve taken second place. He must have been forty years older than her and she sure didn’t spend much time with him, or those girls. I was their restaurant steward, and at first I had no idea they were a family, just assumed they’d been allocated to the same table. Actually, at the time, I just thought she was his older daughter, maybe by an earlier marriage. God help me, she took one look at me and that was my goose cooked. The old boy died a few years later and she was back on the ship, stalking me day and night, until I ended up married to a woman I hardly knew, and after the first week or so, didn’t even like. She was an extreme predator, could have taught your average wolf a thing or two.’

  ‘And after you handed your job on the ships to your brother, what did you do then?’

  ‘I really can’t see that it has anything to do with you, if you don’t mind me saying. But in fact I studied for a teacher’s diploma, specializing in history and maths.’

  ‘So now you teach?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And don’t work at the local supermarket?’

 
‘I did that very briefly, in between semesters.’

  ‘They still seem to know you, where you live and so on.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I shop there, don’t I?’

  I drank some more of his excellent coffee, resisting the urge to lift my little finger. ‘Do you know anything about Amy’s family? Siblings? Parents?’

  ‘No. None of them came to our wedding. I rather gathered, from what she told me, that they were too hoity-toity, didn’t approve of me, though since they’d never met me, I’m not quite sure why.’

  ‘Maybe she was ashamed of them.’

  ‘Or of me.’

  I tried another long shot. ‘Have you ever met her publishers?’

  ‘Her publishers? Why would I? She didn’t write her first book until well after she’d moved on from me to Jason the Body-Builder.’

  ‘So you don’t know Donald Lewis?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Nor his lovely assistant, Miranda?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Never met the woman.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘That’s what I said, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s certainly what you said.’ I stood up. ‘Damn fine coffee, thank you. If you think of anything, blah, blah, blah, you know the routine, here’s my card.’

  ‘Except if I did think of something, why would I relay it to you rather than the police?’

  I nodded. ‘Good question.’

  Walking away from his house towards the supermarket car park, I reflected that unpleasant though Amy herself had been, her husbands seemed to be likeable in their different ways. Even if they were prone to telling lies. And that of the three of them, Seamus was the one who had raised the most question marks in my mind. Not because I suspected him of being implicated in Amy’s death, but because it seemed that he might have been more involved in her current existence than he was trying to pretend. I went back and banged again at his door. When he answered, I said, ‘No names, no pack drill, no repercussions, but you do know Miranda from Amy’s publishers, don’t you?’

  He gave me a considering look. Stared beyond me at the street. Lifted his shoulders and dropped them again. Said, ‘That would be a yes.’