Clock Face of Ills

by Paige Elizabeth Turner

  The kitchen table overflows with paperwork. Visitors habitually sneak peeps to glean a little of their host’s affairs. Not me. No way. I don’t just ‘peep’ – I absorb the whole damn lot. I accidentally knock my elbow against the pile to disturb the pages, and then drag my bag across the stack to uncover further detail. That’s how I derive my income: sneakily poaching others’ information. From the host of legal envelopes, solicitors’ letters, and Land Registry files, I leech further information: ‘Looks like you’re snowed under.’

  ‘Nearly finished. My Vince helps me now. We cancel the sale to Mr Mac. He’ll no be here to buy the farm and Mrs Mac’s saying she’s not want it. My Vince says I’m better stay here where I know everything and I’m comfortable.’

  ‘Your Vince is very wise.’

  ‘He’s a good boy. Just like my Angelo. Why someone do that to him? Angelo’s no hurt anyone.’

  I keep my cool. ‘Sometimes we never understand.’

  ‘He’s get involved in the things he shouldn’t. I learn about the paperworks for Mr Mac and he’s change the figures. Someone’s make him do that. He wouldn’t think like that. He’s… what they call… when he’s a child, the cryptomaniac. Always take things, but he’s learn and gets better.’

  He’s certainly a cryptomaniac now. I know she means ‘kleptomaniac’ but correcting her seems harsh and disrespectful. I play to her hand: ‘I’m sure God will look over him.’

  ‘Yes, and his father. He leaves Angelo in the Will a cheque. What I do with this now?’

  Maria shows me an executor’s cheque in the sum of £٨٨,٩٠٠. In a more congenial setting I would say just give it to me. But here, acting with sincerity and integrity, I suggest using it to help Vince restore the farm to an income producing enterprise. I am not a religious person, but believers often say that God works in mysterious ways. I recognise the cheque as close to the figure Angelo had tried to hoodwink from his mother. Is this God’s way of showing that sin can be repaid with both forgiveness and kindness? I guess I’ll never know unless I convert – and there’s fat chance of that. Never could I live up to God’s expectations.

  I offer Maria my best wishes and head home.

  On arriving home I experience overwhelming relief and achievement. There is also apprehension – wondering what the next enquiry will bring. I can get by with routine debt collecting and summons serving, but my appetite craves the big ones. One day I’ll specialise in just that. Dream on, Liv.

  My empty fridge and foodless pantry spur me to Maccas where I purchase a tray of my usuals: Quarter with Cheese, large fries, Caramel Sundae and two Apple Pies. I pick up a tattered newspaper from the servery and slide behind a shiny fibreglass table in the dining area. I demolish the burger while I scrape silver foil off two promotional ‘Scratchies’ I earnt from my purchase. What did I say to Maria about sins repaid with kindness?’ I can’t even fluke fifth division in Lotto, yet here, on my first card, I’ve scraped off a weekend for two at The Old Well Inn in Barnard Castle.

  Sadly, there is no one in my life I can share a weekend with. Hamilton maybe – for a meal only – but I sure won’t subject myself to his suggestive innuendo over a whole weekend. The word ‘kindness’ hovers. Who can I be kind to?

  I am shallow. An introvert by election. Most of my friends distanced themselves after the Marchant situation, so they won’t be a recipient of this windfall. Nor will I give the weekend to my step-parents who don’t leave the house for longer than it takes to grab a trolley of groceries from their local Tesco.

  And then I think of someone who shares similar singledom as do I. Witty, reserved, independent, and at odds with society: Rose Hernandez.

  Epilogue

  I lean over my bath. Platinum blonde hair colour drains from the matted mess atop my head. Since starting in this game, I flush away one identity for the sake of a new one, in line with each new contract. Whilst I am undecided about what I’ll next get my teeth into – because I have the weekend in Barnard Castle to enjoy – I must be prepared.

  The phone interrupts, as is its habit when I’m in the middle of doing something important. I snatch it from the toilet lid and see Superintendent Thornton’s number.

  ‘Olivia. Nice to hear you.’

  Why? You want something? ‘Likewise.’

  ‘Just wanted to catch up and let you know a credit will hit your account tonight.’

  ‘Thanks for that. I could do with steak instead of Spam.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not pressed for a quid. Listen, you wouldn’t be interested in coming back, would you? Different constabulary, new challenges.’

  ‘No thanks. Got enough challenges of my own dispensing with the past. You can always keep me in mind for anything freelance, though.’

  ‘Will do. Look, I didn’t thank you properly for the Trotter file. The conclusion shook me, as I’m sure it did you. I could not have foreseen that Gillian might be subjected to danger, otherwise I wouldn’t have assigned her, nor you for that matter. We charged McMaster with her death, had ample evidence. He vehemently denied it. What sunk him was Trotter’s technological obsession. She had a bloody camera tucked into a curtain fold. Nailed McMaster good and proper. Bastard sleazed his way into her home and wound his bloody tie around her neck. She didn’t stand a chance.

  ‘Must say I got a laugh out of your cameo comedy act… the way you flipped over that couch and appeared like a bimbo out of a birthday cake. Unbeatable.’

  Shit. What a fool. I didn’t even think of checking. There I was, intent on arranging a cam for Rose’s shop, and I’m being recorded with my very own idea! ‘Yeah, well. I’ve just learnt a valuable lesson.’

  ‘So, Mac eventually coughed to doing her and Giuseppe Caruso – the forensics were too compelling. No amount of his bullshit could save him. Word is that he had enormous pressure from the brass to plea. Makes sense to me. The Chief Constable needs a clean ship. Offered Mac a cushy deal. Saves calling on you to testify.’

  ‘That’s a relief. I don’t know if I could face him.’

  ‘You won’t have to worry about that for a while. Sentencing comes up in a week. I’ll let you know his fate.’

  ‘What about Main? Did Street nail him?’

  ‘That’s going down as the eighth wonder of the world. Mac absolved Main. He offered a plea to killing Angelo Caruso in an accidental rage. Definitely something going on there, because I know from the glove you produced and truck rental records, Main was up to his eyeballs. And his DNA was all over the Audi – which he couldn’t even torch properly. Main had to waste Angelo to satisfy McMaster. Friggin’ wimp if you ask me. He had motive and opportunity – and a key to Mac’s shed for Christ’s sake. I couldn’t understand it.’

  I do. McMaster has a massive pension lying beneath Ashton Hill. Main knows about it. I’d bet a pound to an ingot that McMaster struck a deal with him. He, McMaster, would cop the rap for Angelo Caruso’s death in exchange for Main keeping mum about the gold, thereby paving the way for Mac to resume his operation after release. He’ll probably be glued to a Zimmer frame and consuming life-preserving medication instead of Dewar’s, but the dream of one day reclaiming his mine will help him through twenty years’ prison.

  Author’s Note

  Readers often ask: ‘How did you come up with the story?’

  The subconscious rewards writers with rich and fruitful material. It also produces words and scenes that, on first impression, are meaningless and incomprehensible – the very foundation of this story. Clock face of Ills was conceptualised of a midnight dream in which I stood before a towering clock (Big Ben, perhaps) whose Roman numerals shimmered luminous words: bill, mill, dill, sill, quill…

  Through sleep-filled eyes, I scrawled a page of barely decipherable notes. After 15 minutes, the title became a work in progress.

  Originally intended as 12 short stories set over 12 hours, with each story focusing on o
ne of the ‘ills’ the draft swelled into the third account of Olivia Watts and her Watts Happening? Investigations agency. You will have recognised the ‘bill’ slammed on the table; Blackshaw’s ‘Mill’; Ashton ‘Hill’; Angelo referred to as a ‘dill’; the false window ‘sill’; Roy Street’s fountain pen resembling a ‘quill’ and ‘Phil’ McMaster.

  I hope you enjoyed ‘Clock face’. Turn the page for an introduction to Olivia’s next assignment in Drain of Evidence.

  Paige offers a preview of Olivia Watts’next case in the ‘Watts Happening?

  Investigations’ series.

  Drain of Evidence.

  Available summer 2018.

  I curdle to the piercing shriek.

  ‘My ring,’ Rose splutters. ‘I dropped it down the sink.’

  No big deal. It won’t be the first time a woman has lost the pledge of marriage down the drain – and it certainly won’t be the last. But now is not the time for nonchalance because I am yet to fully understand Rose Hernandez. The ring obviously holds far greater significance than faded memories of a long-departed boyfriend.

  ‘Rose,’ I whisper. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll have it for you in a second.’

  ‘It’s my grandmother’s. She left it to me.’

  Piece of piss, as my stepfather used to say. I drop to my knees, open the warped veneer cabinet beneath the vanity basin, and check the U-bend drainpipe. Plastic. Brilliant. I could have faced corroded steel or brass tinged with green ferrous oxide. I wrap my hand around the ribbed coupling and twist it loose. A gush of water surges over my hands and onto the cabinet’s lower shelf.

  I unscrew the second coupling and drop the plastic pipe into a dish Rose intuitively produces from the breakfast tray. Two clunks and a metallic tinkle drop into the bowl. The diamond encrusted gold ring glints from the silt. I scrunch my face and sink my hand into a grey clump of matted hair. I extract the ring and then repeat the exercise, hoping to souvenir the remnants of someone else’s mishap.

  I tease my fingers around the bowl and pull out two bullet casings and a piece of broken denture. I stall at the thought of a person leaving the motel with only half a dental plate in place. But my real attention rests with the bullet casings. Twenty-two calibre is my best guess. They are no stranger to me. We used them in the police service (ladies’ loads, the macho men called them) but finding them in a drain, where they’ve presumably been expected to ride the waves of spent make-up, shaving cream and stubble, nose pickings and a multitude of other foreign objects destined for sewerage treatment, is not what one would ordinarily expect to find in a motel bathroom. I flick into work mode – which for me is easy – grab my camera and snap a few shots of the sink, the sink pipe, the mess in the bowl, and the casings themselves. I don’t have the benefit of the tiny plastic ruler that forensic officers lay next to their evidence, so I lay a shiny one pound coin alongside the rounds to demonstrate perspective of size. I secure them in individual Glad Sandwich Bags, a pack of which I carry in my handbag as Watts Happening? Investigations’ budget version of police evidence bags.

  No one, without something to hide, would dispose of bullet casings in such a thoughtless manner.