Crusher

by Niall Leonard

  It had been a bit of a gamble, but I couldn’t see any other way of finding out where Kendrick lived, short of chasing the bus on foot. When she’d arrived, I’d noticed, she had come down the steps from the top deck of the bus, and I’d been hoping she’d travel back that way too. I could see why she’d prefer the top deck: the lower was always packed with enormous buggies, gloomy pensioners and school kids playing crap music through the tinny speakers on their phones. Luckily it was still too early for school kids, but there were plenty of gloomy pensioners sucking their dentures, and several mums lugged buggies and babies on and off through the course of the journey. At every stop I tensed, getting ready for Kendrick to come down, but the bus trundled on and on, further into the endless grey warren of shops and streets and traffic lights that was West London, until we were about five miles from my house. Still she did not appear. I was beginning to think I’d screwed up, and that she’d never got on the bus. Maybe she’d noticed me following and shaken off her tail … no, she’d have to be paranoid to think anyone was following her. Except, of course, I was.

  Buses always make me doze off. They might be noisy but they’re warm, and the movement rocks me to sleep. I heard raised heels clacking down the stairs, realized my eyes were closed, and opened them just in time to see Elsa Kendrick at the exit doors, ringing the bell. The bus slowed and stopped, the doors hissed open and she climbed down. Turning left she walked back the way the bus had come, and I waited till she had passed before I started to rise from my seat. The old man in the flat cap who had settled in beside me snorted and scowled, as if I was getting off just to inconvenience him, and took his time moving aside. The doors had already started to close by the time I got to them, and I had to wait agonizing seconds for the driver to open them again. I jumped out and looked around as the bus moved off, and caught a glimpse of Kendrick’s red hair as she crossed the road further down at a set of lights. Crossing the road behind the bus I nearly ended up on the handlebars of a pizza delivery moped coming the other way. The rider meeped his little horn and swore at me through his helmet, but I ignored him and hurried on.

  Kendrick walked with her head held high and her hands in her coat pockets. She moved quickly and with poise, quite light on her feet. She had a nice figure, I had to admit, and it wasn’t hard to keep my eyes on it. When she turned left abruptly and disappeared I hurried my pace.

  I was just in time. When I got to the corner she was about ten doors further up, fishing in her handbag. The terraced houses were narrow and set back from the pavement by tiny low-walled front gardens about two paces deep. If she had looked back I would have had nowhere to hide—apart from behind a lamppost—but finally she pulled a bunch of keys from her handbag, chose one, opened the door in front of her and stepped inside without a backward glance. I heard her letterbox rattle as the door shut.

  I walked up and paused at her gate. The house was slightly larger than ours, but where most other houses in that street had one front door, this had two. It had clearly been converted into upstairs and downstairs flats, and I had no idea which door was hers. There were no obvious clues from where I stood. A small flowerbed had been cut into the concrete of the front yard, and a few scrawny rose bushes were poking optimistically through its sticky brown clay. Both front doors were identical mass-produced hardwood numbers, unpainted, with a few panels of yellow-tinted rippled glass to allow the sunshine in, when there was any. I saw a light go on behind the right-hand door, towards the rear of the flat—in the kitchen, I guessed. The bell pushes were identical too—black plastic numbers, each with a little clear window below for a name, neither with any name in it. What the hell, I thought, I’ve a fifty-fifty chance of being right. I pressed the right-hand button, heard a bell buzz, and waited. Footsteps approached and I saw Kendrick’s face through one of the glass panels, checking me out, before her hand reached for the latch.

  She only opened the door halfway, and when she saw my face I could see her thinking about shutting it again. I spoke before she had the chance.

  “Ms. Kendrick, I’m sorry, I called Social Services, but they said you were on leave.”

  “This is my home. You shouldn’t have come here.” There was a large glass of white wine in her hand, I noticed.

  “I’m sorry, I just wanted to talk to you. I know you were a friend of my dad’s.” I didn’t, but it seemed like a fair guess. Not many social workers cried over their dead clients. “I just wanted to talk to somebody about … everything that’s happened. I need advice.” I wasn’t sure if the little-boy-lost routine was working, but she hadn’t slammed the door yet.

  “How did you know where I lived?”

  “My dad left lots of papers behind. I’d been looking through them.” It wasn’t a lie. Not as such.

  “He wrote something about me?” She looked worried, and at the same time intrigued. I glanced at my watch. I was going to be late for this meeting at the restaurant. Sod it, so I’d be late. “Can I come in? I promise I won’t take up too much of your time. I have a job interview at five.”

  That at least was true, and I suppose she could tell, because she stepped back and opened the door for me to come in. I shut it behind me and followed her down the narrow hall, sealed off from the stairs by a thin partition, and into the front room. Two rooms downstairs and a kitchen at the back, I guessed. The middle door—the door to her bedroom, I supposed—was shut. The walls and carpet of the living room were in pale neutral colours, with cream-coloured throws draped over square, modern armchairs from that flat-pack Swedish store. Pale colours make a place look bigger, I knew, and this flat needed all the help it could get. The whole place was anally neat, although there was an odd sweet-sour smell underneath, like perfume that had gone off.

  “Would you like a drink?” Kendrick waved her wineglass at me, then blushed. “Tea or coffee, I mean, of course.”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said, perching on the edge of the sofa. I wasn’t sure how I was going to play this, or where to start.

  “You said you wanted advice.”

  “Yeah. This has all happened so fast, I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Did you read those leaflets I left you?”

  “I looked through them. The thing is, when you came round, I thought it was official business. But your office said you’ve been on leave for months now. You were close to my dad, weren’t you?”

  She looked down, embarrassed and timid now she could no longer hide behind her expired ID, and perched herself on the edge of the armchair, facing me. “I couldn’t believe it, when I heard what had happened,” she said. “Especially when I heard …”

  “That the cops thought I did it?”

  “I wanted to see you for myself. I’m sorry about … all the business with the official ID. Your dad hadn’t told you about us, and I was trying to respect that. But as soon as I took one look at you I knew the police had it all wrong. Noel told me so much about you—he was so proud of you. What you’d been through, and how you’d straightened yourself out, through sheer willpower.”

  “Yeah. But it was mostly his willpower.”

  “So what was it he wrote about me?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “A lot of his papers were stolen.”

  She seemed amused that I’d managed to fool her by appealing to her vanity. “He didn’t write anything about me, did he? And he never did tell you about us.” It was her turn to sound like a sulky adolescent.

  “I thought there was something going on,” I said, “a few months ago. He’d got himself a decent haircut, smartened up his appearance. Bought that brown suit when he couldn’t really afford it. Sometimes he’d come in really late, and creep about trying not to wake me up, but I could tell …”

  “What?”

  “That he was happier.” Her face brightened. She looked wistful. “Maybe he meant to tell me. We never talked that much. Well, he did, but I never really listened. And now it’s too late.” That was t
rue as well. I’d noticed the truth could be a way of disarming people.

  Kendrick sighed and took another drink of wine. It was a big glass but it was already nearly empty.

  “How did you two meet?” I asked.

  “He was at the Coach and Horses—our local—doing some research. He was supposed to be meeting some architect or something, he said, and he thought I was her. Maybe that was just a line, but it worked.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t,” I said. “He always found research easier than actually writing. What was he researching?”

  “Oh, there’s this local urban myth, about some gangster who buried his victims in the pillars of the flyover. Where the motorway crosses the canal.”

  She smiled at the absurdity of it. But having met the Guvnor it didn’t sound absurd to me. Who had Dad been talking to?

  “After that he was up a few times a week. Sometimes he’d spend the afternoon here, with me …” She looked coy. I guessed they hadn’t been playing Scrabble. “He was such a sweet guy—I can’t believe that mother of yours walked out on him. And her own child. What a bitch.”

  She said that with such bitterness it sounded as if she was the abandoned child, not me. I wanted to reassure her I’d got over it, but decided it was none of her business. Besides … I wasn’t sure I ever had.

  “I asked him to stay over a few times,” she went on. “He never did. Always had to get home to you.” This with a tight smile of envy. “He was going to bring me to meet you. Soon, he said. He had to get you used to the idea first, of him having a girlfriend, after it just being the two of you for so long. And then …”

  “He was murdered,” I said.

  She flinched, then smiled sadly. “Yeah.”

  “And you never met any of his friends?” I asked. “At the Weaver’s Arms?”

  Oh, crap. The Weaver’s Arms—the story the old blokes told me … my dad hiding under a table.

  Elsa saw the look on my face. “What?”

  “Sorry, Elsa—but can I ask, are you married?”

  “Separated.” She held up her left hand, and I could just make out a fading white band on her ring finger.

  “When did that happen? The separation.”

  “Last year. Long before I met Noel.”

  “What does he look like? Your husband.”

  “My ex, you mean? He’s forty or so. Big belly. Bald on top, short white hair. And he has these tattoos all over his forearms. Fake Maori ones.”

  My dad hiding under the table from a huge bloke with Maori tattoos … Dad had been knocking off his wife.

  “Why did the two of you split?” I said. “Sorry to be so nosy.”

  “Jonno has … a bit of a temper.” Her voice had dropped almost to a whisper. She drained her wineglass.

  “Was he ever violent towards you?”

  “Now you sound like the social worker,” she said, and got up. “Sure you won’t have anything?” I shook my head. She went into the kitchen. I followed her and stood in the hall while she took a bottle of wine from the fridge and refilled her glass.

  “What does your ex do for a living?”

  “He’s a lorry driver. International. He’s back and forward to Germany and Holland all the time.”

  “You must have been lonely.”

  She glared at me, as if I’d been pitying or patronizing her. Maybe I had, I realized, and went on hurriedly, “Is he in the country this week?”

  I was trying not to say, “Where was he the night my dad was murdered?” but she got the implication anyway and froze, her wineglass halfway to her lips.

  “No.” She shook her head. “He couldn’t have. Not even Jonno. That’s just too—”

  “If I wanted to talk to him …?”

  “You mustn’t. He’ll—look, he probably wasn’t even here that night—”

  “Fine, he can tell that to the police.”

  “Don’t tell the police. Please, Finn. You don’t know what he’s like.”

  “I won’t tell them I spoke to you, I promise,” I said.

  She turned away to sip her wine as if she was ashamed of me watching her.

  “He’s in the phone book,” she said finally. “Under Haulage. Jonno Kendrick.”

  “OK,” I said. A glance at my watch told me I had less than an hour to get to Pimlico for this job interview at the restaurant. I was on the wrong side of West London and rush hour was just starting. “I have to go,” I said. I turned and headed for the door.

  “Finn, wait.” She plonked her wineglass down and came after me. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”

  “Thanks, Elsa. And thanks for … making Dad happy,” I said.

  “Stay a bit longer,” she said. “Have a proper drink.” She grinned. She had a lovely shy smile that went all the way to her eyes. “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”

  “Sorry, Elsa, I really do have a job interview,” I said.

  “Call them. Put it off. You’ve been through a terrible experience, Finn. We both have.” She laid her hand on my arm and looked at me, and abruptly I found myself wondering what she’d done as a social worker to get herself suspended. She must have caught what I was thinking, because she pulled her hand away and started playing with her hair.

  “Bye,” I said, as I turned the latch.

  “Take care, OK?”

  She shut the door behind me and I hurried back towards the main street. That was weird, I thought. Did she really just make a pass at me? I’d started off afraid I’d never get into her house, and ended up worried I’d never get out. I wondered if Dad had felt the same way.

  seven

  I arrived at the Iron Bridge five minutes late and sweating. The doors were open, but it was too early for any customers. The decor was muted and classy, with discreet lighting glinting off crystal wineglasses and spotless cutlery laid out on crisp cream linen. It wasn’t cutting-edge trendy or chintzy nostalgic, it was just timeless and cool. A waitress all in black apart from a white cotton apron was flitting like a hummingbird from table to table, deftly arranging tiny pots of flowers. She looked up as I entered, and I could see that the staff were chosen as carefully as the decor. Slim and curvy with perfect skin and dark brown eyes, she was Malaysian, or Chinese perhaps. She approached me with a wide, relaxed smile. If my jeans and trainers and sweatshirt made me look more like a mugger than a customer, she didn’t let her opinion show.

  “Hi there, can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Mr. Eccles? About a job.”

  She blinked. Of course, I thought, Eccles is a celebrity chef, he’s on telly, he doesn’t do his own hiring and firing. I should have asked for the major-domo, or whatever the manager is called in a place like this.

  “I’ll find out if he’s available,” she said at last. “Who shall I say is asking for him?”

  “Maguire,” I said. “Finn Maguire.” I didn’t mention the Guvnor and I didn’t intend to. Whoever interviewed me would know who’d recommended me, I thought, and besides, I was a bit embarrassed by the association.

  “Take a seat,” she said, waving a graceful hand. I thanked her, but I didn’t sit down. While she headed out back I tried not to fidget or put my hands in my pockets. The place intimidated me, but I didn’t want to look like a total chav.

  She returned a few minutes later and gave me a practised smile. “Would you come this way, please?” Standing aside, she gestured for me to precede her towards the back of the restaurant. By the swing doors leading to the kitchen was an unadorned door so discreet it was almost invisible. I stopped, unsure whether it opened with a push or lowered like a drawbridge. I may not have looked like a chav, but I may well have looked like the village idiot. The waitress stepped ahead of me, pushed the door open gently, and directed me down a dim corridor painted dark red. “Chef is in the office,” she said. “First door on the left.”

  I knocked on the first door and waited. I wasn’t sure I heard anyone tell me to come in, but I just wanted to get this ordeal over with, so
I opened the door and entered.

  Eccles’s office was in much the same understated decor as the restaurant, but it was dominated by a sleek desk of pale wood with a computer perched on it—one of those super-slick ones with everything integrated into the massive screen. I noticed the office had its own kitchen en suite. It seemed odd, when there was a fully equipped commercial kitchen next door, but maybe Eccles liked to work up his new recipes in a private setting.

  Chris Eccles himself was seated at the desk, in chef’s whites, looking through a pile of receipts and scribbling figures onto a pad beside him, ignoring the computer. It figured somehow; he always made a big deal on his TV show about preparing ingredients by hand. I walked up to the desk, a little nervously, and cleared my throat. He looked up, unsmiling, and examined me over the narrow designer glasses that had become one of his trademarks.

  “Hi. I’m Finn Maguire.”

  Eccles glanced at his watch. It was seven minutes past five. I had the impression he wanted to bollock me, but he merely jerked his chin at the chair facing his desk. I sat down and laid my hands in my lap, wishing I’d gone home from the undertaker’s to change and shower instead of chasing Elsa Kendrick across West London.

  “I’m told you have kitchen experience,” said Eccles. Straight in, no small talk. His tone was neutral, as if the decision had already been made and he was only going through the motions. On camera he had a twinge of Geordie to his accent; in real life it seemed he didn’t bother.

  “I don’t, I’m sorry. Only serving at a fast-food place.”

  Now he looked pained. “Which one?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “And what sort of position did you have in mind?”

  “Anything, Mr. Eccles, I’m really not fussy.”

  “Front of house?”

  “Waiting tables, you mean?”

  “Yes, waiting tables. Serving customers. Handling wine.”

  “I could do that, but … I don’t think I’d do your place justice.”

  Now his jaw was working. It was a strong, square jaw, and he had thick black hair that rarely did what it was told. Viewers—not all of them female—used to swoon at the way he rolled up his sleeves and wrestled with his ingredients, twinkling for the camera. But he wasn’t twinkling now, now he was looking really pissed off, as if some zany celeb had come in and asked him to do egg and beans on toast and serve it on a plastic tray, naked apart from his apron.