by Liz Evans
‘Lee knows you’re not crispy barbecue?’
‘Well, course he does. We kept in touch. He’s my boy, isn’t he? What sort of father would I have been to let him go thinking he’d lost his da? And he always saw there was work and a meal for me at his place when I was passing by. A bit of washing-up and regular dinners for the week can set a man up nicely for the road.’
Barbra caught my eye. ‘Sounds cosy, don’t it?’ she said bitterly.
‘Now don’t be like that, Babs darlin’. I told you, I always kept a watch out for you. And you’ve done well for yourself too. Look ten years younger now than the day I married you. Would you believe, I didn’t recognise her? Followed her down the street and didn’t dare say hello in case I was accosting a supermodel.’
‘Stop up the syrup valve, Sean. You knew it was me all right. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lee tipped you off where to find me. You were just trying to work out the best way to tap me for a loan. You nearly tapped me into bloody oblivion.’
‘It was him shoved you under that taxi in London?’
‘It was an accident, I swear on my mammy’s grave.’
‘Your mammy is alive and well and drinking herself stupid in Killarney,’ Barbra pointed out.
‘God bless her. But you know what I’m saying. I never meant to hurt her,’ Sean assured me. ‘I’d just screwed up meself to tap her on the shoulder and say me hellos when some eejit pushes me and next thing I know my Babs is sailing into the road.’
‘Nice of you to pick me up,’ his other half muttered.
‘I was scared. Blokes look like me, they take you for a head- case. Or a mugger. Lay in first and ask questions later. So I made meself scarce while they dusted you down. I watched from round the corner,’ he informed me. ‘Saw she was all right. I’d not have left her if I’d have thought she was hurt. It’s a man’s job to be looking after his woman when she’s hurting.
He tried to take Barbra’s hand. She snatched it away. ‘I managed to hurt all by myself for years, Sean Delaney. Without any help from you.’
Something else had occurred to me. ‘Is it you who’s been hanging around, haunting this place?’
‘Not haunting. Just nursing Babs when she was poorly.’
‘He got a spare key from Lee, would you believe?’ Barbra said. ‘The little B only had some cut when he was down.’
‘And isn’t it just a blessing that he did? With you here all by yourself without a soul to fetch a drink of water? I told her - she needs someone to look out for her.’
This time Barbra didn’t evade his hand when it linked with hers on the table.
‘It was him phoned up and spooked you that night Annie and I stayed over, wasn’t it?’
It was Sean who answered: ‘I couldn’t be carrying on sneaking about outside any more. I had to know whether we still had a chance, me and Babs. Or if I should be moving on again.’ He twisted his tanned and scarred fingers more tightly into her softly manicured ones. ‘I’ve always had feelings for you, Babs. You know that.’
‘Feelings for Barney’s money, more like,’ Barbra said. ‘Don’t think I don’t know why you’ve blown back, Sean.’
Her protests didn’t sound too convincing to me.
Sean didn’t think so either. His hand slid up her forearm and continued until it was massaging the side of her neck. The shrug with which she tried to dislodge it was distinctly half-hearted. There was no mistaking the fact that she still fancied the jeans off him. And she was lonely. I was beginning to get the feeling that they’d both like me out of the way so they could put the kitchen table to more inventive uses.
Time to get down to business.
‘Talking of Barney ... doesn’t the fact you weren’t legally married to the bloke alter things a tad?’
‘I was legally married. I was a widow. I’ve a death certificate to prove it. You can’t get me on that one. It’s not like I knew it was bigamy.’
‘Lee did, though. And Sean. But I wasn’t thinking of the bigamy so much - I was thinking about the will. All left to you as his lawful wedded wife, wasn’t it? But now it would seem you aren’t.’
‘I’m still entitled. I lived with him for over two years. That entitles me to a share.’
‘Checked already, have you? I think you’ll find it doesn’t entitle you to the whole cake. Didn’t you say Barney had made an earlier will leaving the lot to his brother ... ?’
‘His brother is a sponger. That family would have bled him dry and then spat him out. That’s the reason I married Barney ... to keep him away from the bloodsuckers.’
‘So you won’t mind handing the lot over to Barney’s family - seeing as how his welfare is no longer an issue?’
She didn’t need to answer. Her face said it all. Few people who’ve suddenly gone from poor to rich want to make the reverse journey. Otherwise all those lottery winners who’ve been made miserable by their fortunes would be showering cheques on all and sundry, wouldn’t they? The chances were if Barney had left it to her by name she’d easily be able to fend off any challenge by his family anyway. Hopefully she didn’t know that yet.
I nudged a little harder whilst she teetered on the precipice. ‘And then there’s the tax man. There are different inheritance rules for those who aren’t legally married.’
‘It was legal,’ Barbra snapped. She sounded worried. Her emotional attachment to her cash was serious. It would need major surgery to separate her and her gold credit cards.
‘Maybe. But while you may beat off Barney’s family in the courts, have you ever heard of anyone beating the Inland Revenue?’
That was the killer punch, she didn’t want to take the chance. ‘How much, you bitch?’
‘Takes one to know one, Barbra. I’ll take my fee, for a start.’ She scrabbled the chequebook open. ‘As we agreed?’
‘Not a penny more. Not a penny less. Here’s my invoice.’
She wrote out the figure for my billed hours and expenses -
less the fifty per cent discount I’d negotiated if she’d pretend to be interested in putting money into Vetch’s business.
(Oh, come on, now - you didn’t really think Barbra wanted to be a partner in the agency, did you? I knew Annie wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to save us all from Barbra’s meddling. She’s now Vetch’s new junior partner. I’m hoping the power-crazed-tycoon effect will wear off soon.)
With vicious stabs, Barbra scrawled her signature and flung it over.
I folded my prize. ‘I’ll take that as the close of this case. Which brings me to a little custom of mine. I always keep a souvenir of each job. It’s a sort of superstition. Your snaps are a bit dog-eared by now. Is it OK if I have the negatives?’
‘I guess.’ Barbra took a leather shoulder bag from a hook behind the kitchen door, reached inside - and drew out the wallet of family snaps she’d flashed at me that first morning in the Rock Hotel. From a pouch in the back she took out a handful of negative strips and threw them down. ‘Here. Sort them out yourself.’
I squinted down the tiny squares until I’d hived off what I needed.
‘Did yer ever find out who they were?’ Barbra asked.
‘Not really. Apart from the one I told you about. Harry Rouse; the bloke who died.’
‘Right waste of money then, weren’t you.’
‘But you still have so much to waste, Barbra.’ I stood up and smiled sweetly at her. ‘Speaking of which, there is one more thing.’
‘I thought there might be.’ She reached for the cheques again.
‘Can you ring for a cab to take me back to Seatoun? The fare’s on you. I’ll wait for it out front. Enjoy yourselves.’
I winked at Sean and walked out. Blackmail can be fun, but I didn’t want to make a habit of it (as a profession, it was too crowded already).
Epilogue
Atch died. Three weeks after they took him away from the farm. I tried to visit him, but they’d temporarily committed him to a unit on the other side of the county whil
st they waited to assess him, and other things got in the way - as they do. By the time I got myself and my bunch of visiting grapes together, he’d collapsed and was already in a coma, connected to plastic tubes and oxygen mask. I kept seeing the kid with the catapult who had terrorised St Biddy’s seventy-odd years ago, and made an idiot of myself blubbing in the visitors’ car park.
They carried out a post-mortem and the cause of death was listed as Alzheimer’s. Although it was never officially released, I heard via the grapevine (otherwise known as Zeb’s big mouth) that the hospital pathology department had a ten-minute major alert when they found the old boy was a diphtheria carrier. Whether he’d caught it from one of the illegals Harry hid on the farm or he’d been the original carrier I don’t think anyone ever ascertained. But there were no more cases that year and the bug went back into the ‘Dormant Diseases’ files.
Luke’s inquest made the coroner’s court just four months after his death, when guilty consciences were still raw.
His mum came down for it. She sat at the front of court, listening as the medical and forensic details were read out. And wept quietly during the coroner’s tedious exercise of his own voice whilst he droned on about statistics covering accidents in the home.
As you’ll have gathered, I went to the inquest. So did Kelly Benting and Carter. I’d like to give you a nice romantic ending to that relationship and tell you they sat hand in hand, united in mutual recognition of each other’s good qualities. But let’s not kid ourselves. As far as Kelly was concerned, Carter was still a plump, dull, awkward geek who’d managed to blackmail her into sex. She came to that inquest to make sure he didn’t change his mind at the last minute and blurt out the truth about Luke’s death. And Carter? Well, I guess he came because for that hour he had some power over Kelly again.
They sat at opposite ends of the rows of spectators’ chairs and only looked at each other once, exchanging a half-ashamed, half- triumphant glance when the verdict of ‘accidental death’ was announced.
Were you expecting me to leap up at the last minute and tell them what really happened? Truth and justice at all costs sort of thing?
What would have been the point? It was an accident. Carter and Kelly would probably have had their knuckles smacked for messing around with the evidence and ended up with a criminal record, but in the end who would have profited by the truth coming out?
That’s my high moralist argument for keeping my mouth shut.
The other argument goes like this - Luke Steadman was a nasty, lying, low-life slug, and as far as I can see, he got exactly what he was asking for.
But I managed to keep this opinion to myself and sound genuinely sorry as I wished Ginny Bowman the best of luck and apologised for not finding a will at the cottage. ‘To be honest, I don’t think he got around to making one.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She huddled inside a cheap raincoat against the north winds that were now whistling around the Christmas-decked shopping parades. ‘There’s not that much left. Just bits and bobs of furniture, a few pounds in Uncle Eric’s bank and Luke’s old motorbike. The finance company took the cottage.’
‘There’s the car. That must be worth something.’
‘What car?’
‘The red sports car.’
Ginny shook her head. ‘There was no car. I should think Uncle Eric got rid of that old thing years ago.’
I knew he’d taken it. But I guess a tiny part of me had been hoping he’d returned it. I saw him the day I met his mum to return those negatives.
Faye couldn’t get back down to the constituency house, so we met up in London. She chose a cafe in the Parkway, Camden Town. She arrived ten minutes after me, very much the chic, cool MP; all pale grey trouser suit, silk blouse and discreet silver.
‘I hope you don’t mind this,’ she said. ‘It’s close enough for me to walk from Islington.’
‘And small enough for you to check who’s eavesdropping?’
It was just one tiny, narrowish room with half a dozen stainless-steel tables ranged down the sides and a serving counter at the far end displaying the myriad combinations that could be packed into your lunchtime sarnie.
But the coffee was good and served in unexpectedly large cups. I slid the negs across the table and idly watched the world go by whilst Faye swiftly checked the minute squares. The glass doors had been folded back to let in the September sunshine, and smells of petrol and diesel mingled with the roar of traffic. It was moving fast for a London street, so I only caught a brief glimpse of the red sports model before a black taxi cut it off from my view.
‘Do you have to leave already?’ Faye asked.
I realised I’d half risen from my chair, and sank back. ‘No. Thought I’d seen someone I knew. My mistake.’
‘I’m always doing that. There are so many people around here, aren’t there? You don’t notice until you’ve been somewhere gloriously peaceful. And then it’s a real lifestyle adjustment when you get back.’
‘How was Scotland?’
‘As I said ... peaceful.’
‘And uneventful?’
‘If you’re referring to my relationship with my husband - yes. Perhaps it was just my guilty conscience making me think he was behaving strangely. Things are back to normal. We’re very happy.’
She sounded like she really believed that. Or was trying to. It seemed a pity to spoil it. But I did. I told her about Luke and Peter and what they’d intended to do to her.
It had taken me a lot of sleepless nights to decide. But in the end I figured if she wasn’t on her guard, Peter might try it again. She didn’t take it quite the way I expected.
‘I do understand why you’re doing this, Grace.’
‘You do?’
‘Peter told me.’
‘He did?’
‘Yes. We’re very close. And I value that closeness. It’s very precious to me. That’s why I can understand how much it must have hurt you to lose that.’
‘You can?’
‘Of course. But believe me, lashing out may be satisfactory now, but you’ll bitterly regret it later. And hate yourself for doing it.’
I was beginning to see where this was going. ‘Peter told you we’d split up?’
‘It happens, Grace. Let it go.’
‘Or to put it another way - you think I’m a vindictive bitch trying to get back at Peter for dumping me?’
‘No, I understand how much it hurts to give up someone you love. But sometimes you have to. For both your sakes.’
‘Believe me, Faye, I can understand how you don’t want to admit that your son is capable of doing that to you. And Luke was just a great actor. If you don’t want to believe - fine.’
‘Can you prove any of this, Grace? Do you have the tapes you claim they made of me?’
‘I burnt them.’
‘The photographs Peter supposedly took?’
‘They’re history too.’
‘I see.’
Even a non-equestrian like me knows what not to do with a dead filly. ‘It’s up to you, Faye. Believe or don’t believe. I have life to get on with elsewhere. ’Bye.’
‘Goodbye, Grace. And good luck. This is for you.’
She passed me an envelope. It was cash. It would be. She wouldn’t want to have to explain a cheque to a private investigator at some later date.
I left her sitting there drinking her coffee with careful sips that didn’t smudge her lipgloss. She looked totally serene. I never did decide whether she was a far more talented actor than her son, or she genuinely believed Luke had loved her.
(There was no cabinet post for her in the reshuffle. She got one of those obscure appointments no one has ever heard of and a lot of media speculation on why she was no longer flavour of the month. I’d never believed before in all this conspiracy theory about the mysterious ‘they’ watching the great and good, but now I’m not so sure. Somebody tipped her husband off.)
I walked through Regent’s Park after I left her, to
catch the tube to Victoria at Great Portland Street. There was a red sports car waiting at the lights as I left the gates to cross over Marylebone Road. But so what? There must be hundreds of them in London. It’s a big place. I didn’t bother to look at the driver. I had a date to keep with another bloke in Seatoun.
Annie met me there. She was sitting on a wall waiting when I bowled up on Grannie Vetch’s bike.
‘Ready?’
I swallowed hard and nodded. I didn’t want to do it. But there was no way out. ‘Which one?’
‘There.’ She pointed over the forecourt. ‘Five years old. Low mileage. One year’s MOT. And they throw in six months’ road tax.’
I stepped over the low wall to examine the Micra, with its red and white balloon decorations and large banner announcing that it was the ‘Bargain of the Week’.
Annie crowded in behind me. ‘And he’ll knock three hundred pounds off the price on the board. What do you think?’
I tried to think of something positive to comment on. ‘It’s ... it’s blue.’
‘Good colour for tailing jobs.’
‘Yes.’ I walked round. It gleamed with car-showroom wax and loving attention. So did the ten-year-old black Porsche just beyond it.
‘Leave,’ Annie said.
‘It’s practically the same price.’
‘The insurance isn’t.’
‘I’d be paying it.’
‘Grace, for heaven’s sake, be practical. I’m trying to put this agency on a viable footing. How can I use you on a surveillance job in that? If you don’t like the Micra, what about that grey Toyota?’
‘There’s a Morris Minor over there. Only two previous owners. Let’s see what kind of deal we can get on that. Maybe he’ll throw in a Zimmer frame too.’
Annie folded her arms. ‘That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You’ve still got the hump about turning thirty?’