Death of a Mermaid

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘There’s nothing to say.’ Mags had wished with all her heart that Freddy would come and had prayed that she would not. It was costing Freddy everything to plead. She heard Freddy’s words from twenty-two years ago. You love bloody Mother Julian more than me.

  ‘Did Mum say anything to you about me? I know she didn’t put me in her will. I’m OK with that. I don’t care, I only care—’ Freddy’s face tightened. She would care. She would cling to anything that showed Reenie had thought about her. Mags forced herself to harden her heart. She couldn’t deal with Freddy in Newhaven.

  ‘I can’t do this.’ Mags was pleading. Then, suddenly, ‘Karen’s dead.’

  ‘I know.’ Freddy subsided. ‘It’s terrible.’

  ‘It’s my fault.’

  ‘What? That’s mad.’ Freddy grabbed her shoulders.

  The crunch of gravel.

  ‘Not mad. I didn’t mean that.’ Freddy smacked her forehead. ‘You can’t take it all on; it was me too. I could have been nicer.’

  ‘Hey! Guys.’

  Andy Power strode down the hill, clutching his jacket, jabbing his sunglasses over the bridge of his nose. The grieving son. The businessman who got things done.

  ‘Seven thirty at the battery. Tomorrow night,’ Mags breathed.

  Mags turned her ankle as she hurried to the bus stop. She greeted the hot pain as a gift from God. Another gift was the bus coming down the lane.

  Julian’s Revelations fell open at the page. As the bus ground to a halt in the car park behind the library, Mags dwelt on every word.

  18

  FREDDY

  ‘I invited her to come in one of the cars. She refused.’ Andy looked desperate. Like when they were kids and he’d failed – again – to score a goal or clean the fishery floor to their dad’s impossible standards. Shattered by the funeral and the snatched moments with Mags, Freddy pulled him to her.

  ‘Did Mags say anything?’ Andy held onto her.

  ‘We’re meeting at the battery tomorrow night. I’ll ask.’ Freddy was furious with herself. Sharing the information made it seem less precious. Mags would not want anyone to know. Tough. Freddy was fed up with secrets. ‘Listen, I’m going on Sunday. There’re no more animals coming for a week. If any do arrive, could one of your kids feed him?’

  ‘You could have the hotel. Rick won’t do it. I don’t have time and my brood have school.’ Andy hadn’t asked if she had a life elsewhere. It was like he knew she didn’t. ‘The offer’s still out there for the fish round. It’s commission, but Karen made it pay. Once you got into the swing, you would too.’

  She shook her head. ‘Thank you, Andy.’ Why not? Her parents were dead. Her dad couldn’t stop her. She’d tell the truth about why she had gone when they were young and never come back. Andy would understand.

  ‘Andy—’ Freddy stopped. Mags and me, we loved each other. I’ve never loved anyone as much before or since, she was my soulmate. It wasn’t only her secret to tell. Besides, Andy might not understand. A cool-headed businessman with a wife, kids and a position at the Rotary Club, his world wasn’t so different to their dad’s.

  ‘Coming to the wake? I’ll sort Ricky.’ Andy spun on his heel, the host, mindful of the mourners.

  ‘Best not. Not being funny, but neither of us could sort Ricky.’ Freddy planted a kiss on his cheek. ‘Mind yourself, bro!’

  At the gates she glanced back. Framed by the arch, sharp-suited with shades, amidst the sprawl of gravestones, her brother cut a lonely figure.

  Freddy had meant what she’d told Toni: she didn’t want charity from either of her brothers. Her mum’s will had respected Fred Power’s wishes. Reenie Power had punished Freddy for falling in love with a woman. Or she would have changed it.

  Father Pete’s words came back to her. Freddy was freed. She would say goodbye to Mags at the lunette battery then leave Newhaven. For ever.

  19

  TONI

  Toni was driving past the church when she saw the woman in a vivid purple anorak coming out. She was struggling with the door in what was building to a gale. Yesterday, Mags had left Reenie Power’s funeral before Toni had a chance to speak to her. She’d seen Mags talking to Freddy. If they were talking, maybe they could all get on. Toni lowered the passenger window and leaned across the gearstick.

  ‘Confessing your sins!’ From Mags’s expression Toni saw she’d hit the wrong nail bang on the head. Shit.

  Mags seemed inclined to ignore Toni, then changed her mind. She came over to the Jeep. ‘I’m on my way to the library.’

  ‘Hop in. I’ll give you a lift.’ To Toni’s surprise, Mags did so.

  ‘I’ve been to confession.’ Mags shut her eyes and rested her head against the seat.

  ‘Oh no! I mean, I hope it… um, worked.’ Toni let go of the ignition key and sat back. At the convent, on Freddy’s suggestion – Toni claimed to have nothing worth confessing – Toni had told Father George she’d shoplifted. Disgusted, she discovered that absolution depended on not nicking again.

  ‘Have you seen Freddy?’ Mags asked.

  ‘She’s not cool about me and Ricky.’ Toni watched a man lifting a ladder off the roof of an alarm installation van and manoeuvring it up the steps of a house. Idly, she wondered at the need for a burglar alarm if you lived next to a fire station and a church.

  ‘Why not?’ Mags sounded surprised.

  ‘I think mainly because I never told her. And Rick’s being shitty with her, treating her like a gold-digger.’ Toni swivelled to look at Mags. ‘I saw you guys talking in the cemetery. Did you make up?’ Idiotic phrase.

  ‘She wants to see me.’ Mags was clasping a small volume. Toni knew without looking that it was Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love. At the convent Mags had experienced the discovery of Julian (a female saint) as her own revelation. Her crush on the fourteenth-century saint could have won Mags Mastermind with Julian as her specialist subject. Not that much was known of the recluse, whose text was considered the earliest by a woman writing in English. The Revelations had struck Toni as far-fetched and unnecessary agony for Julian, but in Julian Mags had found a soulmate. Toni admitted to herself now that while she’d furiously questioned the dogma of the faith imposed on her by her parents’ decision to send her and Amy to the convent, she did at least envy Mags’s devotion. After her dad was murdered, Toni had been rudderless. She sometimes envied Ricky’s Catholicism too. He went to Mass before every voyage. Toni never commented – whatever kept him safe. What Toni did miss in her life was the Mermaids.

  ‘Are you going to see Freddy?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mags opened the book and Toni saw scribbles and underlines. Mags had got A for Religious Studies and, by practically bashing Toni over the head with her missal, helped Toni scrape a pass.

  ‘You and Freddy, you were… good together.’ Toni risked it.

  ‘I have done her harm,’ Mags said. ‘I’ve hurt her.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s not that bad.’ Toni was unnerved by Mags’s vehemence. She knew that being gay wasn’t the deal it once was, at least in Britain. But she also knew from hate-crime statistics that in many places it was still a bad idea to kiss on a bus or walk down a street hand in hand. Being a Catholic didn’t help.

  ‘I must tell her.’

  ‘You could tell me, as a kind of rehearsal.’ Toni meant it, but she heard the nosy detective within.

  ‘I have to go.’ Mags flung out of the car as if ejected and hurtled off down the street.

  ‘Julian, you have a lot to answer for,’ Toni breathed. She debated warning Freddy of the divine revelation heading her way. No. Things were bad enough between them.

  The church door opened and the priest came out. Toni knew Father Peter slightly from meetings about supporting the community and crime prevention. He’d been hearing Mags’s confession. If only witnesses would open up to detectives as easily as parishioners to priests.

  *

  ‘We have no corroboration for that door-to-door witness who clai
ms to have seen a man leaving Karen’s house at half ten one night. Mrs Haskins.’ Malcolm scooted his chair across to Toni. He rarely put his feet on the floor in CID, instead whizzing about with the alacrity of a kid in a baby-walker. The other day Toni caught herself cautioning him about the perils of lack of exercise. God knows why she went mother hen on Malcolm. Probably selfish – she needed Malcolm fit, healthy and happy.

  ‘Doubtless, Mrs Busybody’s mystery man is a figment of her twisted mind.’ With no air-con, CID was stuffy with a miasma of takeaways and overworked humanity. The heat outside and a case which, like Daniel Tyler’s car, had hit a block, had landed Toni with a stonking headache. Most people were loving the record-hot temperatures that signalled the end of the world. Fair-skinned and too busy to lie in the sun, Toni wasn’t one of them.

  Malcolm’s phone rang. He zipped back, putting out his hands to buffer the chair from hitting his desk, and lifted the receiver. He nodded as he jotted down whatever the caller was telling him on his pad, finishing, ‘That was the lab, some fibres on Karen’s clothing match the jumper Daniel was wearing. They’ll have the report over later. That partial print—’

  ‘So, Daniel comes home, finds Karen in bed and goes mental.’ Toni massaged her temples. ‘Man scarpers and is spotted by Old Mother Haskins. Daniel has a row with his mum and steals her car. He rounds up Daisy Webb and drives them to Kingdom come.’ She hadn’t wanted Andy to be right about there being a man. She hadn’t wanted a boy to have killed his mother. It was a rotten outcome. She clutched her head. No, the timing’s wrong. Mrs H saw the bloke at half ten.’

  ‘There’s more.’ Malcolm was munching. No point in reminding him that he came out in blotches when he wolfed a packet of Starburst. ‘We got the lab results, finally. That partial print in the toilet? It brought up a match.’

  ‘And?’ Toni’s mouth watered at the idea of a strawberry-flavoured Starburst. It could pass for supper.

  ‘Richard Power.’ Malcolm read from his pad, although he didn’t need the prompt. ‘Ricky’s on the database from that business—’

  ‘Jesus, Mal, say it. You mean when Ricky lost his licence for being pissed and parking the fish van on the Beddingham roundabout.’ Toni took her anorak from the back of her chair and hauled it on.

  The incident had happened before her time. But police memories are long. When she’d started seeing Ricky the team were merciless with jibes about parallel universe parking, puns involving sea creatures and the highway code. Google flung up links of headlines in the Argus and the Sussex Express. Andy had made a cack-handed attempt to render rubbish PR into wine by leasing a hoarding outside Lewes station. A photograph of the van marooned in the middle of the A27 with the words ‘Power Fishery’ on the side. Reenie had sent him to confession. The all-purpose cow.

  ‘What was he doing in Karen Munday’s toilet? No, Ricky didn’t play away with Karen Munday.’ Toni blew off Malcolm’s scaredy-cat look. ‘Actually, no surprise his prints are there, he sometimes took Daniel home after a trip. Let me tell you, for my sins, the clown loves me.’

  20

  MAGS

  With the spring came the motorhomes; fold-up tables were erected, picnics spread. The occupants sunned themselves in deckchairs facing France. But it had been an unseasonably cold day, and a biting wind ruffled detritus – empty cans, plastic bottles, twine – on the shingle. The hollow boom of waves hitting the cliff face might be gunfire from the lunette battery warding off enemies, Napoleonic or Nazi.

  From the cliff, Mags surveyed the deserted beach where, two weeks ago, Karen Munday’s boy had crashed and died. It was the day before Reenie Power died. Mags passed a hand over her eyes but still saw the image of Karen sobbing, Please let me back in. Mags slammed shut her mind. Toni would say Mags wasn’t that powerful, but Mags couldn’t shake off her belief that everything, all three deaths, were her fault.

  The only sign of the tragedy now was a length of crime tape whipping like a windsock from a life-ring post and oil stains on the concrete.

  Mags knew that a girl was still critically ill in hospital. Mrs Barker had been back in, full of how the poor mite wouldn’t walk again and was in a coma. Unlike Freddy when Toni’s dad had died, the tragedy didn’t jolt Mags’s faith. Jesus died for the pain of humanity, he wasn’t responsible for our actions. Mags had schooled herself to forgive evil. A forgiveness that stopped with the Australian cardinal, Pope Francis’s number three, who had been jailed for abusing choirboys. Mags drew the line at child abuse, but these men were not Catholicism. Mags had confessed her sins to Father Pete. One step towards renewal. She opened Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love and in the dimming light re-read, The Holy Spirit leads a man to confession to reveal his sins willingly…

  Was she willing? The drop to the beach, not sheer like at Seaford Head, was still precipitous. When they were Mermaids Freddy had met Toni’s crazy dare and clambered down to the beach at the steepest point. Halfway, she’d skidded on loose chalk and tumbled the last ten feet. She’d lain still on the shingle. Rushing down the same way, Mags had fallen on her knees beside Freddy. She’d kissed her, stroked her hair and prayed to God to save her. She’d told Freddy that she loved her. Freddy’s eyes had snapped open. I love you too.

  Mags had worried that Toni would feel left out, that the dynamic of the Mermaids would be besmirched. Toni was generous, she was good. Thinking of this now, Mags saw that Toni, the fervent unbeliever, had been closer to God than any of them. Toni had been pleased for them. By then she had a steady boyfriend. The Mermaids were perhaps less important to her.

  They had swapped what they loved about each other. Mags loved the way Freddy walked as if she was always in a hurry and was in charge. How she narrowed her eyes when she was thinking. Freddy couldn’t take her eyes off the sweep of Mags’s thigh when she crossed her legs and the faint ripple of muscle on her forearms. Mags had been unnerved and excited by Freddy’s intimate observations. Freddy saw the whole of her. And then it was over.

  Freddy was due at the battery in five minutes. From this perspective, Mags would see her arrive. There was time to leave; she could go over the hill, past the fort and out through the nature reserve. Perhaps, like Mags, Freddy would have second thoughts and not come. Mags had wanted to cancel. But Julian had made her stick to the arrangement. She must face Freddy. She must tell the truth. All of it. Her life was not worth the price of evil. Mags was a Mermaid. She would do it for all of them.

  Buffeted by the wind, Mags picked her way down the cliff. A sign on the shingle ridge warned, ‘No safe access beyond this point’, with icons depicting four kinds of danger. Falling rocks, slippery surfaces, rocky foreshore and deep water with high tides.

  Who is the fifth danger? Freddy. Always Freddy.

  The sun had set, the sky towards Shoreham was washed pink. Over the lighthouse, clouds darkening the cliffs gave Mags a bad feeling as she fumbled her way along the bottom, uncaring of falling rocks.

  The grille across the entrance to the battery was open. Mags had to look twice to be sure. All her life it had been barred. The Mermaids used to scare each other, making up what lay within. They knew the layout from history lessons. Gun chambers off a passage, apertures facing the sea. They’d imagined a skeleton on a heap of ammunition that was used to fire at Napoleon’s ships. He would have been a lovelorn soldier who’d killed himself and was never found.

  Should she wait for Freddy? How much more exciting to greet Freddy as a guide already familiar with the battery’s secrets. With Julian’s book for courage, Mags ventured into the dank dark. At first the tunnel was pitch black, but bit by bit shapes resolved into doorways to the chambers and she orientated herself.

  As fast as her mood had soared, it evaporated and Mags knew that she’d made a terrible mistake. Foolish. She was not seventeen and in love. She bumped into cold stone. She could not see Freddy. What had she been thinking? If she left now, she’d meet Freddy. She had sworn to be honest, not to play childish games and mislead her. Tell the t
ruth. She’d been mad. She could not see her. There was a way to avoid her. Mags felt her way to the entrance and pulled the grille to so that it appeared closed. The padlock hung loose, but it was nearly dark, Freddy might not notice it was unlocked.

  Mags crept back into the tunnel. The brickwork was wet, not with water but with the slime of centuries. Her heart in her mouth, she forced herself to go the end of the tunnel. If Freddy did come in, she’d never go that far. Inside the cell, dwindling light crept through the gun sighting. Mags had come to redress her sins. Instead, here she was, skulking in a tomb.

  Mags felt warm fingers around her neck. She tried to shout. No sound came out. She went to prise off the fingers but snatched at nothing. Her arms were pinioned. She fought blindly, kicking with her feet, but she only aided the dragging into swimming darkness. Something gagged her, blocking her nose. She couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Where is it?’

  She had vowed to follow Julian’s example and be unafraid of death. When her time came, like Julian, Mags had longed to be with God. She would go gracefully. Except.

  Not now… not yet…

  When she came to there was something floating before her. Mary. Mags pictured her icon. Intention. It was the crucifix.

  Mags felt a firm push. The ground was cold and hard, but she barely felt it. The cross resolved into a gun slot. She was still in the lunette battery.

  ‘What have you done with it? Where is it?’ That grating voice again.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand what you mean.’

  The cross vanished.

  21

  FREDDY

  Dolly’s owner had been late and then in no hurry to go. She’d lamented what a loss dear Reenie was and what a wonderful daughter Freddy was to take over the hotel. And look at how happy Dolly is – she’s smiling. Freddy couldn’t see that the cockatiel looked bothered one way or the other but agreed for politeness’s sake. She and Dolly had not quite hit it off. Freddy did not add that Reenie’s wonderful daughter would be hightailing it out of Newhaven as soon as the last guest checked out.