Death of a Mermaid

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘I did once.’ Was it karma? Toni banished the horrible notion in case it showed on her face.

  Daniel Munday’s body was extracted from the Ford, zipped into a body bag and slotted into the mortuary van. Toni’s gaze tracked the van along the beach until the turn onto Fort Road. It was followed by an empty ambulance.

  Toni could have tasked a colleague with informing Karen Munday her boy was dead. But she decided to do it herself.

  Recently, with Ricky away more frequently and in a bad mood when he was on shore, Toni had begun to question the wisdom of her move to the coast. She valued London’s anonymity over the seaside town of best-forgotten faces. The answer lay in the darkness beyond the beach. As the crews worked on in comparative silence, Toni caught the hush and push of the tide. She smelled seaweed on the swift breeze. She’d been lured by another kind of siren to the blues and twos. The sea had called her home.

  *

  Newhaven was at the mouth of the Ouse, a tidal river that ran into the English Channel. One bank was lined with timber-clad townhouses and glass-balconied apartments. The other was untouched by regeneration. Portakabins, breeze-block lock-ups. A down-at-heel pub jostled with a sprawling estate of warehouses.

  The town ended with a pebbled beach, the port at one end and Tide Mills, the ruins of a Victorian village, at the other. When the river was rerouted, the old outlet became a graveyard of urban junk, supermarket trolleys, oil drums, car engines, tyres and traffic cones. Stretching away were tracts of coarse grasses hiding treacherous pools of brackish water.

  Driving towards the beach, Toni shuddered; in the last vestiges of night, it seemed to her that the unforgiving landscape belonged to the dead.

  Seaport Road was one of several little streets of flat-fronted houses around the harbour. Some were boarded up, others curtained with England flags. One was behind rusting vehicles resting drunkenly on perished tyres being slowly strangled by triffid weeds. This area, where an unwanted sofa was as likely to be parked outside as a car, was yet to be snapped up by descending middle classes in search of a bijou Victorian bargain.

  Toni drove past Karen’s house and U-turned at the bus garage, where, behind a metal stockade, double-deckers had been corralled for the night. She idled for a moment to muster courage. Destinations promised seaside cheer: Brighton, Eastbourne, Worthing, Hastings. Each bus was named for a notable Sussex resident – Dora Bryan, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Virginia Woolf – none of whom, Toni was sure, would be seen dead in Newhaven.

  There was a space outside Karen’s house the size of Karen Munday’s Ford. Unable to quite fit the Jeep in, Toni left it nose out.

  With twenty years in the job, Toni could do the death knock. This was different. She should have delegated to Sheena. Or better, Malcolm, her DS, would have struck the right note. Grief took people in many ways. Toni didn’t fancy finding out how it would take Karen. Lulled by the heated seats, she didn’t move.

  As the past came back to bite her, Toni couldn’t know that only an hour earlier Karen, too, had been gripped by memory.

  *

  ‘Give it back.’ Toni reached down but the hand had already whipped her bag through the gap under the toilet door.

  ‘Tampons,’ Karen chanted. ‘Sister Kemp’s got her period.’ Her name for Toni since her dad had died. She heard sniggering. Karen’s Minions, Freddy called them. Four tough girls who were rather nice to Toni when Karen wasn’t there.

  Toni could stay in the cubicle until the next lesson. But Karen didn’t care about missing lessons. She’d be happy to keep Toni prisoner. Toni pulled the chain and drew back the bolt.

  Karen had unbuckled Toni’s briefcase. Her dad’s case. Everything would spill onto the revolting wet floor. Toni lunged, but Karen was quick. She started singing Take That’s ‘It Only Takes A Minute’. The Minions tapped their feet. If Toni hadn’t been frightened out of her wits, she’d have been impressed that they could keep time.

  ‘Give it to me.’ Toni was furious about her tears. Even when the police officers had told them about Dad and made her and Amy drink hot chocolate she hadn’t cried.

  ‘Only if you do what I say.’ Karen spoke so only Toni could hear.

  ‘What?’ Inside her dad’s case was the lock of his hair Toni took everywhere and slept with under her pillow.

  ‘Make me a Mermaid again. I was one before you. They listen to you.’

  ‘No, they don’t.’ Then it dawned on Toni that it was true. These days, since her dad died, everyone listened to her.

  Toni Kemp had joined the convent in the second year when friendships were already cemented. She had gravitated to Mags McKee and Freddy Power, but didn’t care for Karen, who told her that four was a crowd.

  Then her dad had died and everyone wanted Toni to go round with them and share their lunch boxes. This she often accepted, because, with her dad dead, her mum mostly forgot to pack hers.

  One day, Toni had sat with the Mermaids beneath the Mary statue where they hung out. Toni knew they were Mermaids because Karen had told her. She’d have got the idea anyway, because they told each other stories about living under the sea away from rules and nuns. Karen made it clear that Toni would never be a Mermaid when she said that she hadn’t seen Disney’s The Little Mermaid. It was all kids’ stuff compared to her last school, where Toni had been the official supplier of cigarettes – shoplifting them from Sainsbury’s and selling them at an attractive discount to the older girls. She wasn’t interested in King Triton’s creepy relationship with Ariel. She suspected Karen of setting her up. No way would she seriously be a Mermaid.

  *

  Arms resting on the steering wheel of the cooling Jeep, Toni struggled to recall how the toilet thing had ended. Karen had once stuck chewed gum in her bag, but that was another time and another bag.

  Opening the car door, Toni heard the question as if Mags had been waiting for her on the pavement.

  ‘D’you want to be a Mermaid? You, me and Freddy.’

  ‘And Karen,’ she had reminded Mags.

  ‘Not any more.’ Mags had looked strange.

  ‘OK.’ That had changed things. ‘Yes. Great. Thanks.’

  A few months older than Toni, Karen was forty. Ricky had gone to her beach party – fireworks and a Spice Girls tribute act. Toni could have been Ricky’s plus one but, pleading work, had skulked at home watching wall-to-wall Gilmore Girls.

  Crazily, it occurred to Toni that Karen’s boy had died on the same beach where Karen had danced under a silvery moon to the Spice Girls. Standing on the pavement outside Karen’s house, Toni wished she had gone. Were it possible, it might make what she had to do less awkward. Maybe Karen would have gone easier on her in the Co-op. She couldn’t think about that.

  Ms Munday? Karen. Hi. We’ve found your car… maybe you didn’t know it was miss— Get to the point.

  Karen, I’m so very sorry to say that a boy fitting…

  The door was open.

  ‘Karen?’ Toni edged inside. ‘Anyone home?’

  Switching on her Maglite, Toni revealed a poky lounge. Leather sofa, mismatching armchair, massive wall-mounted telly above a flame-effect gas fire. A half-eaten box of Maltesers lay on the sofa. There was a pet cage on a table by the window. Here, too, the door was open, the cage was empty. Toni fastened it shut, although the horse – hamster or whatever – had bolted. No water bowl, food dispenser empty. Toni mentally stored the observations and continued into a galley kitchen.

  ‘Hello? Karen? Police,’ she called. ‘Are you OK?’

  A pan of stew was on an induction hob. Toni brushed the steel with a knuckle, already mindful of leaving prints. It was warm. The stew had been heated some while ago and, going by the full pan, no one had taken a helping.

  ‘Karen, it’s me. Toni Kemp.’ Like it would be good news. She mounted the stairs. The main bedroom was empty. The untidiness was not the kind Toni constantly fought in her flat when she was too tired to hang things up. The room looked ransacked. Twisted and tumbled bedding; a
pillow lay at her feet on the floor. Pieces of broken glass were scattered by a bedside shelf; the dark patch on the carpet signalled a spilt glass of water.

  Karen Munday was slumped on the toilet, trousers and knickers around her knees, her head against the wall. She didn’t stir when Toni approached.

  ‘Karen.’ Toni knelt down by the toilet brush. She put a finger to Karen’s neck. She felt warm. Like the stew. No pulse.

  Karen Munday would never know her son was dead.

  Punching 999 into her phone, Toni flipped through possibilities: heart attack, stroke, drugs? Were the deaths linked?

  As she called it in, Karen took a closer look at Karen’s body. It was none of the above. There were marks on her throat.

  Karen Munday had been murdered.

  4

  MAGS

  ‘Newhaven Public Library. How may I help?’

  ‘You didn’t see my text.’ Ricky sounded accusatory.

  ‘We’re not allowed phones at work,’ Mags said.

  ‘Couldn’t you keep it on silent?’

  ‘It’s not about being quiet, these days libraries are noisy, creative spaces, it’s so that—’ Mags stopped. Cut Ricky some slack; his mother was dying.

  ‘Andy said could you come? Now?’ Ricky sounded as if he was pleading.

  ‘Is Freddy there?’ Since she’d texted Freddy the morning before, while convinced she wouldn’t come, Mags had been watching for her.

  ‘You’re kidding me. She doesn’t know.’

  ‘Tell Andy I’m on my way.’ Mags hurriedly replaced the phone before Ricky asked if she’d told Freddy. Lying would be a gift for the devil.

  Twenty minutes later, having told her boss she didn’t feel well – true, after last night’s brandies, she had a headache – Mags was with Andy Power as he made tea in his mother’s kitchen.

  ‘I’ll do that. You go up to Reenie,’ she said again.

  ‘Glad of the excuse, to be honest.’ Andy filled the kettle to overflowing. ‘I can’t take much more.’

  Andy was the eldest brother. Since Fred Power’s death twenty years ago, Andy had taken the reins of Power’s fishery aged just eighteen. Ricky, four years Andy’s junior – Toni called him her ‘toy boy’, although at thirty-four Ricky was grown up – had joined from school. Toni maintained that Fred Power’s death had strengthened his iron grip on his sons. Mags tended to agree.

  ‘Not long, the nurse said.’ Mags could say this to Andy. She was careful around Ricky. The last to leave home and super-protective of his mum, Ricky dissolved if she so much as hinted that Reenie wouldn’t survive her latest illness.

  ‘Yep.’ Andy was checking his phone. The fishery was essentially twenty-four/seven. ‘Ricky’s going out on the boat tonight.’

  ‘Not if Mum’s like this.’ Ricky had a habit of sneaking up. Unfair, Mags remonstrated with herself. He had a light step.

  ‘No, of course.’ She touched her crucifix.

  Ricky had been reading Reenie The Little Mermaid from the Kindle on his phone. He said she had responded. She’d read it to him when he was young. At the convent, Mags had got the impression from Freddy that Reenie had only read it to her eldest child. It was their thing, Freddy used to say.

  ‘Doubt she knows.’ Andy mashed the teabag against the side of Reenie’s ‘I ♥ Lourdes’ mug. ‘It’ll be fine if you go out. Mum would want us to keep the business going.’ He handed Ricky a mug of tea.

  The brothers exchanged a look that Mags didn’t understand. She was intruding on a family’s grief.

  ‘That’s Mum’s.’ Ricky scowled. ‘Don’t bother for me.’

  ‘You need to get several hauls in tonight.’ Andy began cleaning the counter with the dishcloth. ‘We’ve got orders to fulfil.’

  ‘Maybe not tonight?’ Mags knew she should keep her mouth shut, but Ricky would never forgive Andy – or her – if Reenie died while he was at sea. ‘I was wondering, should I call…’ she clasped her crucifix, ‘if we should tell Freddy?’ At the convent it had usually been Toni who sought permission to do something she’d already done. Her head was pounding. She must have what Toni called a stalking hangover; you woke up thinking you’d got away with it and as the day progressed it caught up with you. This one was fast overtaking.

  ‘No!’ The brothers rounded on her.

  ‘Over my dead body.’ Ricky seemed to blanch as he heard himself.

  Mags changed the subject. ‘Did you manage to speak to Danny about Karen’s fish van?’

  ‘Shit,’ Ricky snapped, his face to the ceiling. He’d agreed to remind Karen, via her son Danny, not to sound her horn in Reenie’s street.

  ‘Karen’s due.’ Facing Freddy would be bad enough; Mags didn’t want to deal with Karen Munday again. Last week had been excruciating.

  ‘Reenie’s ill,’ she’d told Karen, although she had to know.

  ‘I forgot.’ Karen had pantomimed horror for leaning on the hooter and handed over a bag of fish. ‘Forty quid, please. And make sure Andrew reimburses you! He can be a slippery customer.’

  Mags had given Karen two twenties from her purse.

  ‘Please could I have a receipt?’ Why had she asked that? She’d never ask Andy to reimburse her.

  ‘I don’t do them. Too much faff.’ Karen had sucked her teeth as if with regret. Tipping back her baseball cap, Karen had asked carelessly, ‘You ladies still Mermaids?’

  ‘No, we’re not.’ Mags had been firm.

  ‘You hear anything from Fred-er-rica?’ Karen had freighted her question with disdain. ‘She’ll want to say goodbye to her mum.’

  ‘Freddy doesn’t know Reenie’s ill.’ Mags had regretted saying this. The less Karen knew about Freddy, the better.

  ‘No way!’ Karen had looked genuinely shocked. ‘What, she doesn’t know? That’s not good.’

  ‘I expect her brothers will tell her.’

  ‘They hate her. I’m surprised you haven’t. You’re her friend. Isn’t that the job of a Mermaid?’ Karen’s sarcasm failed to mask her hurt. Mags had felt herself redden.

  Andy was holding out the tea – the Lourdes mug – to her.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll handle Karen when she turns up.’ He pushed off the kitchen counter. ‘It’s my fish. That reminds me, I must pay you for last week.’ Andy peeled forty pounds from a roll in his trousers. ‘You’re a saint the way you’ve cared for Mum, but don’t be out of pocket.’

  Accepting the money, Mags took a sip of tea.

  They trooped up the stairs. Crossing herself, Mags took the dressing table stool in a corner. She prayed it would be soon; the family was suffering. The brothers kept vigil either side of the bed, clasping their mother’s hands. The only sound was Reenie’s ragged breathing.

  Mags listened for a taxi. Surely Freddy would not come? Watching the wisp of a woman in the bed, Mags recalled. Luke said, …even sinners love those who love them. It was too late to say sorry, but Mags had accepted that Karen was right. It had not been good to leave Reenie’s eldest child unaware that Reenie was gravely ill. Now it was Freddy’s choice if she came or not. She had not said Reenie was dying.

  Ricky’s knuckles were white; he was gripping Reenie’s hand too tight. Andy glanced at his watch. He’d be fretting about getting back to work.

  Mags’s challenge was to love her enemies. She’d go into the church on her way back to the library. She’d have to get back to her own work; she couldn’t wait for Reenie to die.

  The second hand ticked on. It was faster than Reenie’s hard-won breaths. In. Long gap. Out. Long gap. Like a pump, in the last throes the body returned to basics.

  What would that new priest say if he heard what you and Freddy Power got up to? Like Toni had, Mags should move far away from anyone who remembered. Toni had come back.

  The buzz of a phone. Ricky scowled across at Andy. No mobiles at the deathbed had been Andy’s rule.

  ‘It’s Kirsty. Must be to do with the kids.’ Andy let go of his mum’s hand and without a backward glance trotted down
stairs. Reenie hadn’t cared for Andy’s wife – she’d been sniffy about her boys’ girlfriends. As for Freddy…

  After a moment, muttering about fish orders, Ricky kissed Reenie’s fingers and went after Andy. Mags took Andy’s seat and, hesitating, rested her fingers on Reenie’s hand. The old woman’s skin was cold. Suddenly, Reenie’s eyes snapped open.

  ‘Reenie, it’s me, Mags.’ Astonished, Mags said the obvious.

  ‘Do what I—’ Reenie squeezed Mags’s fingers with surprising strength for a dying woman.

  ‘Reenie, I—’ Mags made to get up. She had to fetch Andy and Ricky. Reenie’s fierce stare stopped her.

  ‘Fred…’ A clattering gasp. Silence. Another gasp. Silence. Yawning silence.

  Nothing.

  From the kitchen came low, angry voices. Had Karen come? Dreading meeting Karen almost more than the news that she had to break, Mags went down the stairs and into the living room to give herself breathing space. For some weeks, the boys had been snappy with each other; they were beyond stressed. Mags’s own parents had died five years, ago in the same week. Hr father of heart failure while her mother was under anaesthetic for a minor operation from which she never awoke. Mags had been spared prolonged sick-bed visits.

  Sunlight filtered through the turquoise and emerald plastic strips stuck on the window. Someone had turned on the lava lamps; they glowed green and blue. Muted light from a blue lampshade mingled with the aquarium’s pink heat light. With its shell-patterned carpet and fish wallpaper, the room had always resembled a seabed grotto. The blue-tinted mirror over the fireplace finessed the subterranean effect. Toni always said Freddy had got her dream of living beneath the sea at Reenie’s knee.

  The statue of Mary hadn’t been on the window sill when Mags had last been there. Was it her own statue? In a panic, she snatched it up. The cheap plaster figure was hollow, the empty cavity furred with dust. It was empty. Not hers.

  Freddy and Mags had each bought an icon of Mary in Paris on a school trip. Freddy had given hers to Reenie.