Cut To The Bone

by Sally Spedding

  "You could have responded about Carla Kennedy saying Louis Perelman had been adopted and was mentally ill. That’s so important."

  “Look, lots of kids that age become strangers. Please show me a normal teenager.”

  "And on his twelfth birthday, was given a camera with a zoom lens for close-ups."

  "What kid doesn't have a camera of some sort?"

  There was nothing she could say, and Fraser soon filled the next loaded silence with more of his own grievance. "I've just heard I’m to be out of this flat by the end of the month, and guess what? Following pimps and streetwalkers around."

  But try as she might to empathise, all she could see were that determined youth's distinctive eyes. His violent movements. His anger.

  "What'll you do for a place to live?' she asked automatically.

  "Join the cardboard box brigade, I expect. Can't expect you lot to share that with me now. Just as I was getting a handle on Molloy.”

  Her kids were chucking stuff about. They'd missed her and been worried. Now was their turn for attention.

  "I've got to go," she told him. "Isn't there someone you could stay with? Share for a while maybe?"

  Fraser's snort of derision caught her by surprise, and she rang off, bruised by his uncharacteristic indifference, but also puzzled he'd not mentioned any woman, friend or family of his own he might fall back on.

  "By the way, Mum," Kayleigh interrupted her thoughts. Her cheeks bright pink, and her hair, where Freddie had pulled it, a tangled mess. “This was on the doormat when I got back from school," she said. "Sorry, you should have had it straight away.”

  On her empty plate lay a blue envelope addressed to MRS R MARTIN.

  E & P MoIloy.

  ‘Why Worry.’

  6, Frond Crescent.

  Scrub End.

  Coventry.

  8/1/2014

  KEEP YOURSELF, YOUR LOVER AND YOUR NO-GOOD KIDS AWAY FROM US. OR ELSE.

  My God…

  For apart from the content, there was something vaguely familiar about the writing style…

  "What's up, Mum?" Kayleigh said.

  "No more Sunday School from now on, unless you want to go somewhere else. That’s it."

  "The Molloys, innit?"

  “Yes.”

  Her daughter shrugged. "Sunday's better than Saturday for riding, anyhow. It's quieter up by the woods." She then turned to Rita. "Will Dad get me a pony one day?"

  "You never know."

  Since Frank had left, she’d never felt so vulnerable. The Molloys were closing in and where would that lead? No way must the kids see that letter. Or Tim Fraser, she decided, folding it before slipping it inside her blouse. It would only divert him away from what she'd just discovered in Birmingham. Also, despite the threat, it wasn’t her main worry. Instead, a fear that amongst the stink of dead chickens and the mean streets of Downside, lurked a far worse threat to her precious family.

  51

  Thursday 16th January.

  Rita had spent most of that drizzly Wednesday night, re-living the day's events, worrying about everything, including how her kids’ teachers might find out she'd left them on their own. Meanwhile, her car was still stranded in Birmingham, probably disembowelled by now.

  While she called into Briar Bank Police station on her way into work next day, smarting at Tim Fraser's lack of reaction to her finding Pete Brown, he was in Clandon Road, Marylebone, dragging out his suitcase from under the bed. The lounge bookshelves now bare of his eclectic collection of hardbacks.

  Her calls had come at a bad time. She'd broken every common sense rule in the book and here he was, with enough crap on his plate to last the year. Never mind his impending meeting with Parrot who could be a clever, ruthless slaughterer.

  *

  Jane Truelove typed Rita’s latest Statement on to her pc still without much interest. "I see your friend Tim Fraser's been on the case already," she said, once Rita had signed the printed-out form. The ‘friend’ word loaded with innuendo. “From what I've heard, he’s in some bother.” That normally pleasant face became less so. "I'd let us do the helping this end. We know the ins and outs of the case better than anyone, so why risk alienating us?"

  A road drill started up outside, and Rita felt her cheeks burning. Truelove’s agenda was all too clear. She must still fancy him. However, it was as a mother that Rita erupted.

  "Does it bloody matter who's involved, as long as my Jez's killer's found? How would you feel with nothing happening?"

  "I've known for over three years how you feel."

  The road drilling ceased, but not Rita’s frustration.

  "Was Toby Lake the next in line?” she said. “And who'll be next, eh? My other two? Why not? What's to stop him?" She took a deep breath. "Look, Dave Perelman reckoned his adopted son was sick in the head."

  Truelove’s eyes widened.

  "Where did you hear that?"

  "Can't say, but she knew alright."

  "You mean Jacquie Perelman? Or Harper as she is now?”

  "Someone else." Rita made a mental note of that new name so helpfully given, then asked as casually as she could. "Where's this Jacquie living?"

  "That's confidential."

  "So's my information. Anyway, I could always do an Electoral Roll search…"

  "Fine," said Truelove, and for a moment Rita hesitated, hating herself for her treachery, then showed the flautist's card.

  "You seem to have the magic touch,” came with a tiny smile as Truelove added its details to her screen. “She wouldn't say a dicky bird to us. Too loyal, I always thought."

  So, Carla Kennedy had lied about being questioned. Yet who could blame her?

  “What’s anyone going to do about Pete Brown?" Rita pestered.

  Silence.

  Truelove turned to her pc. Began clicking on this and that. "If you contact that pub and NCP car parks, they'll check out your car," she said. “That’ll be a start.”

  “Thanks, not.”

  Rita stormed out on aching feet. She just had time to buy a copy of the Daily Mail before her bus to work arrived, and inside it, complete with a grainy head and shoulders photo, was news which made her rushed breakfast churn in her stomach.

  TEENAGER BRUTALLY MURDERED.

  Darshan Patel aged 17 years, was found dead yesterday afternoon from a fatal knife wound to his throat, in his father's sandwich-making unit in the Zintec Enterprise Zone, Small Heath, Birmingham. Patel who'd moved from Coventry with his family, was a Sixth Form student at Moorside Tertiary College, hoping to become a lawyer. Its Principal, Geoffrey Lewis described him as ‘a popular and talented all-rounder.’

  The police are anxious to trace anyone who may have been in that area during the early part of the afternoon...

  She ignored the oncoming bus and, having glimpsed Pat Molloy’s hard face giving her a death stare through one of its lower windows, ran back through the heavy drizzle and into the police station where a young Constable Kieron Frobisher’s hand was ready on the desk buzzer in case of trouble.

  "PC Truelove, please. It's urgent," she gasped, drips from her hair trailing down her cheeks.

  "She's on a call," he said. “What’s up?”

  "I’ve just given her my Statement for yesterday, now look.” Rita waved the damp newspaper page at him. “I was there. Yesterday at 2:30. I saw this young bloke near the very place, and followed him back here to Mullion Road…"

  No reaction.

  "Your name please?"

  "Oh, what’s the bloody point?”

  *

  Outside the Police
Station, she wondered who else she could turn to. In desperation, she punched in Tim Fraser's number and left a message about the Zintec murder, begging him to check the local Electoral Roll to confirm the new address of either Louis Perelman or Jacquie Harper or both. Something she should have done yesterday.

  Having then dialled the Council's Housing Department to find out if 315b, Mullion Road was their property or not, she was told to mind her own business.

  So, with a scarf now covering her hair, and her mac collar pulled up over her neck against the icy rain, she arrived at the poky, cement-coated semi with its still-drawn curtains. She was already late for work, testing Mr Waring's generosity to the limit. But right now, this had priority.

  What had once been a gateway to 315b, was marked by two rotting posts. Rita negotiated the weedy path whose bricks lay ragged and uneven underfoot, until she reached the front door. Its green paint chipped; the letterbox a gaping oblong, and next to it, a note.

  NO HAWKERS NO CIRCULARS

  She stuffed it in her mac pocket, checked no-one was around and tried Tim Fraser's number again. Success.

  "I was just about to get back to you," he said. "Are you OK?"

  She put him up to speed, adding that the handwriting on the note she’d taken should be checked. Then, with her mobile still pressed to her ear, she peered through the letterbox into the gloom beyond. The smell of the old, speckled linoleum and pervading damp met her nose, and then came something else. A figure moving towards her from the gloom.

  "Someone's coming,” she whispered. “From inside the house..."

  "Move, now!"

  "No. I must see if it’s him."

  "Rita!"

  Too late. A shiny, steel point appeared through the letterbox, level with her face. She dived to the left of the door and scrambled through the adjoining hawthorn hedge as that same, long blade stabbed backwards and forwards.

  Although her mac was torn by branches, and its belt lay trapped on the hedge's thorns, she didn't stop running till she reached that same play area, with Tim Fraser’s anxious warnings crackling in her ear.

  52

  Five minutes later, having stuffed that stray mac belt with other crucial belongings in his Nike bag, Louis Claus Harper slipped away from Mullion Road, past his school and the junior Grubs still blabbing with their parents at the gate, and on into town.

  No-one had seemed to notice him, with his violin case in one hand and a holdall containing that same knife he'd shoved through the letterbox, in the other. However, once clear of people and finding a handy drain, he got rid of the box-cutter which he’d hidden since yesterday afternoon and his constable uniform’s fake leather shoes With a satisfying finality, they plopped into the water below. But who’d been nosing round the house? he wondered, quickening his pace. Another debt collector? Some horny scrubber or a plain-clothes plodette? Either way, he’d have to be extra clever especially since Lakey had popped up out of the black stuff, and Patel was another stiff. Yes, things were bound to hot up.

  He glanced up at the lowering sky, thanking his God for helping to eliminate a pretty major obstacle. For his bowing hand’s strength and steadiness when he'd needed it most. Quietly too, with the bonus of surprise. Black Dog Brook all over again. But still no new passport or ID from Vienna, and he'd hung on for the postman, only to see the lazy git walk on by.

  While deleting all his emails and emptying his trash box, he'd spotted an ominous one-liner from Fritz Dekker. Operations on hold. New material awaits your arrival.

  So, God wasn’t being that generous. Meanwhile, the old passport due to expire within the month, would have to do, despite the surname Perelman plus that Meadow Hill address being too risky for the wrong people to see. Another giveaway should he try getting a Visitor passport from a Post Office, was the photo with him looking like a snotty, baby Grub.

  Damn…

  He dug in his chinos’ pocket and pulled out a sandwich bag half full of fine, white powder. Within five seconds he'd deftly spread a line along the top of one hand and snorted up through his left nostril. He swayed for a moment, gripped the bus stop then felt himself drift, weightless, far above his hideous surroundings to a beckoning world of pure clarity. His former school's motto AD LUDORUM shining in his mind.

  53

  That same Thursday evening at ten o'clock, mental arithmetic accompanied Jacquie’s journey home from Happy Chicks and, by the time she'd reached the front door, realised that by the end of the month, thanks to extra ‘moonlight shifts’ there, she'd have over eight hundred pounds in her account. Eight hundred whole pounds! Her optimism was short-lived, however, for George Lee would soon be grabbing it, and more.

  Fuck you, Dave.

  And where was Louis' little note he’d nailed near the letterbox? She glanced at the front wall’s three windows and also noticed no curtains had been opened.

  Once inside the front door, she called out to him, but only silence answered.

  Her eyes searched the gloom for the hall light switch. The house was too quiet, save for the old fridge humming in the kitchen.

  Having hung up her shabby, reeking coat, she checked the three downstairs rooms. Still no Louis. Then his bedroom upstairs where that same part-animal, part-vegetable smell lingered from the unmade bed. She opened his wardrobe door and gasped. It was empty. His best pair of jeans and new black chinos gone, likewise his denim jacket and the one for which she'd recently paid £100 at a leather shop sale just last month. Even his computer was cold.

  Only her things remained in the shared bathroom by the stained washbasin.

  Then inspiration struck.

  The Guenari.

  The small attic overhead was empty. Also where it had stood in his bedroom. Was he playing it somewhere? Unlikely. Since the school's music teacher had gone on sick leave, causing the small orchestra to fold, there'd been no need. Maybe he'd hidden it with someone else, in case the bailiffs turned up. Even sold it.

  Then another thought, this time from the realms of darkness, impelled her downstairs and into the kitchen. In particular to the knife drawer jammed tight with damp. Having managed to pull it open, she froze. Just two small vegetable knives lay alongside other cutlery on the yellowed newspaper. So where was the black-handled carver she'd brought from Meadow Hill? Why was it missing? She didn’t dare imagine.

  She checked her watch. 10:35 p.m. He’d been out later than this, but she’d stay up, just in case. However, her heart knew her life savings had brought nothing but suffering and death. That umbilical cord hadn't strangled out memory, but conscience. And how long, she asked herself, feeling exhausted, could she keep what she suspected to herself?

  Once the BBC’s News Channel had delivered the tail end of Darshan Patel’s murder, she tried staying awake, but the chicken plucking shift had been too long and, with images showing that dead lad from his babyhood days swirling in her mind, she groped her way upstairs.

  *

  At eleven o'clock, the phone in the hall rang unanswered. DC Jarvis was in an uncompromising mood, wanting more answers. Still pushing for a search warrant for 315b, Mullion Road.

  54

  Friday 17th January.

  Nine hours later, on a raw, windy Friday morning with a search warrant to hand, Detective Constable Derek Jarvis and Sergeant Crooker faced the bedraggled, dressing-gowned woman who kept the front door of 315b, Mullion Road on a tight chain.

  Jarvis spoke first. "Perjury, Ms. Harper, can result in a jail sentence, so I suggest you co-operate in our enquiries. We have a search warrant, and our questions won't take long, I can assure you."

  “Search warrant? Why? And who's he?" she pointed at Crooker.

  "Sergeant Crooker. Now, may we com
e in?"

  "I’ve not done anything wrong. Bugger off."

  The chain was still taut, the bloodshot eyes fixed on him. Not the best time to mention the search warrant,

  "Go and bully someone else," she glowered. "I mean, look at what we've got living round here. What d'you do about them? Fucking nothing." She began to close the door but the two officers pushed against it.

  "If you help us, Louis may be treated more leniently in a court of law.”

  Crooker shot him a glance, but Jarvis ignored it.

  "Where is your boy, by the way?” He eyed her then the mean hallway. “Tucking into his cornflakes?"

  Never my boy…

  "He's been gone since last night,” she muttered.

  "Really? Any ideas?"

  "London, I expect. Didn't see the point of exams any more. Who would, with no jobs round here?"

  "Is there any forwarding address?"

  "Sorry?”

  Jarvis sighed. This was getting nowhere. Time to soften her up.

  "You must be worried,” he began. “He’s still only sixteen, in the Sixth form, with exams to work for…"

  Crooker also looked suitably concerned.

  "Of course I worry.” Those red eyes began to water. "Louis’ all I've got.”

  "Not been easy though, has it?" Jarvis persevered. "Moving from that swish house, coping on your own. And kids always need money..."

  That did it. Jacquie Harper released the chain and let them both in. Jarvis was taken aback by her thinness. How ill she looked in that moth-eaten dressing gown and manky old slippers. He sniffed a combination of booze, fags and poor drains. Once she’d seen the search warrant, Crooker steered her into that same, small, damp kitchen at the back of the house while Jarvis headed upstairs. He knew what he was after, especially since Bill Marchant at the Met had sent that fake uniform back. Especially since Darshan Patel was dead.