Death of a Mermaid

by Lesley Thomson

  She raced along Fort Road; it felt as if she was running the wrong way on a travellator, past the morgue, the fire station and the church. Mags had been reluctant to meet so she would not wait. Perhaps Freddy would catch Mags coming back. Not if she goes by the nature reserve.

  She was running into the wind, her lungs molten. Freddy missed owning a car. Not that she had owned one; Sarah had bought her a Toyota Aygo for her last birthday. But of course, she’d left that in Liverpool. She would take nothing off Sarah.

  By the time she passed the pub Freddy had slowed to walking, crippled by a stitch. The sun had set, and a luminous light picked out the shingle, the cliffs. There was no one waiting outside the battery. Freddy stumbled to the ridge, her effort doubled on the loose stones. She looked out over the beach. The sea was like glass, insidious as ice. The beach was in shadow, but Freddy could see there was no one down there. Freddy’s feet were leaden, her boots heavy, as she struggled back up the bank to the battery.

  Mags was there. Freddy nearly cried out with joy. The wind making her ears ache, she staggered towards her. Mags was peering into the gate erected by the council to prevent the battery from being used as a drug den. She must have been behind Freddy on the road. When Freddy had assumed she was running towards Mags, she had been running away from her. This idea cut her to the quick.

  ‘Freddy, thank God. When I got here and couldn’t see sight nor sound of you, I was beside myself.’ As if the last two weeks had never happened, Sarah pulled Freddy to her.

  ‘How did you know where to find me?’ Freddy would have collapsed if Sarah hadn’t been holding her. Tight.

  ‘Didn’t I say you, should install Find my iPhone on your phone?’ Sarah murmured.

  ‘I didn’t install it.’ Freddy had ignored what had been posed as a suggestion but was in fact another of Sarah’s rules.

  Sarah wasn’t Mags.

  ‘No. But lucky for you, I did. I checked it after I reached your mum’s house and got no answer. Otherwise, I’d have been stumped.’

  ‘I might have been at the Fishery,’ Freddy said, for argument’s sake. What the hell did it matter where she might have been? Mags had not come.

  ‘I did have a quick scout about the fishery. All those shipping containers. What a dump. It’s a goddamn shanty town. Your brothers are running the place on the cheap. I can see why you hate your family.’

  ‘I don’t hate…’ Freddy felt a paralysis take hold.

  ‘I put in your number and, hey presto!’ Sarah linked arms with her. ‘This is a godawful dump – what are you doing here?’

  ‘I was…’ Mags had not come. ‘I came when I was a Mer— when I was young.’ Freddy craned her neck to gaze up the cliff. Was Mags up there watching? Freddie was clutching at straws. Mags had never intended to come.

  Sarah guided Freddy away from the battery and past the section of beach where Karen’s son had died. Outside the Hope pub she asked Freddy, ‘While I think of it, how is your mama?’

  22

  TONI

  ‘Where were you between the hours of 18.00 and midnight on Friday nineteenth of April?’ Malcolm asked.

  ‘I’d need to see my diary,’ Ricky barked. ‘In my line of work, it’s hard to distinguish days. When we’re at sea they merge.’

  ‘According to my information, you were fishing that day; you lifted anchor at eight. You had come ashore the day before after a five-day trip.’ Malcolm was pleasant. ‘You do a lot of fishing.’

  ‘We don’t call it that.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘We didn’t lift the anchor. We were in the harbour. We use ropes.’

  Toni tossed down her pen. She yelled at the monitor, ‘What Malcolm is asking is if you strangled Karen Munday to death because she threatened to tell me you were having an affair.’ Horrified, she checked the CID room. She was still alone. The interview was meant to be routine, but Ricky was turning it into a shit-show. She herself had given Ricky his alibi. She had assumed that after she left him on the trawler he was there until he left. A stupid mistake that Malcolm was, thankfully, overlooking or Worricker would hang her out to rot.

  ‘…where were you?’ Malcolm’s light tone was a prelude to the Jaws music. Toni longed to haul Ricky across the table by his T-shirt and yell at him. That she might actually do this was precisely why she was sitting this one out and watching it on her laptop. She dragged the headphones to her neck and massaged her scalp. She had another headache. Not helped by Ricky wilfully inserting himself in the frame for murder.

  ‘I went to the fishery around seven.’ Perspiration on Ricky’s forehead and his ruddy cheeks (from being outdoors) made him look as guilty as sin.

  ‘Can anyone verify that?’ Malcolm was scribbling on his pad as if Ricky had given him vital information. An obvious tactic to unnerve Ricky, which Toni knew would go over his head. She wished she could whisper in his ear, Sit back, breathe. Act like you have nothing to hide. She could whisper in Malcolm’s ear. She spoke through the mic. ‘Ask about his phone, the alarm system, CCTV… anything that places him on the trawler.’

  Malcolm frowned fleetingly. He wasn’t short of interrogating experience; she had doubtless taken the words out of his mouth. Toni muted the input.

  ‘What about your security system? Would there be a record of when you logged out of your computer, for example?’ He was genial.

  ‘I wasn’t on my computer. I was mending nets.’ Play nice.

  ‘Can you prove it?’ Malcolm wasn’t smiling now. A signal that he was taxiing to the killer question.

  ‘I was on my own until we went out. The stand-in was late. I didn’t think I had to prove where I was, so no. I already gave a statement.’

  Malcolm slid a photograph across the table.

  ‘Your fingerprints were found in Karen Munday’s toilet.’ He tapped the picture. ‘Can you explain why that would be?’

  Ricky was still. Toni tracked the second hand on the clock above the tape machine, five… six… seven… Come on, Ricky. There were men serving life sentences for being unable to prove they were somewhere other than the crime scene.

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ Ricky said on the count of ten.

  ‘Why would you be at Karen’s house?’ Malcolm was patient.

  ‘Listen, mate, do you honestly think I strangled Karen and left my fingerprints for you to find?’ Ricky fired a look up at the camera. Toni shrank back, as if he could see her. Ricky didn’t know how Karen had died. They’d held it back.

  You lot. She puffed out her cheeks. Ricky was binding his own noose. She batted at the keyboard and accidentally minimised the window showing the interview. She restored it. Had she told him?

  ‘Why do you think we found your fingerprint in the Mundays’ house?’ Malcolm repeated the question.

  Yes, why in actual hell is your fingerprint in Karen’s toilet, Ricky? Toni silently asked.

  ‘I often drop Dan off after a trip. ’ Ricky stuffed his hand between his knees. ‘I’ve gone in sometimes.’

  ‘You remember that now? I was disappointed for a moment. Guys like you, every step has to be considered. Weights, water-line, weather.’ Malcolm the poet. ‘Forget anything and you’re in trouble, I’d think.’

  ‘Yes. No. That’s the only explanation, isn’t it?’ It wasn’t the only explanation. Malcolm let this fact hang in the air between them.

  ‘Have you used Karen’s toilet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You are sure that you have never gone into the toilet?’ A leading question. She should tick Mal off for that, but she was grateful.

  ‘Christ.’ Ricky shook his head. ‘Maybe, yes, I must have. It’s not something you remember, is it?’

  Toni would remember. But she could imagine Ricky forgetting that he’d needed a piss. Ridiculous, but she minded he had been upstairs, that he had gone to her toilet. Ricky would have asked her permission. Karen would said something like ‘Help yourself’ with her wicked laugh. It felt like a kind of intimacy. She hoped that
was all it was.

  ‘Did you use the toilet the night Daniel died?’ Malcolm was asking.

  ‘I didn’t see Daniel that night. He rang in sick. So, no, I didn’t.’

  Toni sat up properly. Daniel Tyler had not been with Ricky on the boat. She had forgotten that.

  ‘Danny lied to you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it that. Dan was an honest lad.’ Ricky stared up at the camera, perhaps hoping for a message from Toni.

  ‘I’m here, darlin’,’ she said without thinking.

  ‘… Look, Danny wanted to get on. He was focused on the job. He wouldn’t have done anything to mess it up.’ Ricky ground to a halt.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  ‘Daniel Munday lied to you and then he stole his mother’s car,’ Malcolm said.

  23

  FREDDY

  ‘It’s amazing you all lived in here, it’s so poky.’ Sarah was cradling Brad the hamster on her lap. He lay on his back like a baby. ‘Why didn’t your parents move when their business took off?’

  ‘Dad was born here, and my grandfather. He’d say if it was good enough for them, then…’ The shout when Reenie had brought up the idea of buying one of the new houses nearer town popped Freddy’s eardrums, as if her parents were in the room. Ricky had cried, Andy’s hand had found hers, they knew to be silent. Freddy had told Sarah about why she’d gone, but not the rest. Not how Fred lost his temper at the drop of a sharp knife, how he had once grabbed hold of Andy so forcefully he had sprained his arm. ‘My son’s so clumsy,’ he’d laughed as he charmed the hospital staff. Freddy had held her dad’s other hand, forcing herself to suck on the lollipop he’d bought her to shore up the image of a loving family man. Now Freddy stole a look at her phone. No text. Had Mags seen her with Sarah and gone away? Better that than Mags had stood her up.

  ‘Those fish are gorgeous colours. What will happen to them now your ma is dead?’ Sarah was behaving as if all was normal – death was just another day – a ruse that experience had proved would work.

  ‘They’ll go to one of my brothers.’ Freddy could return with Sarah to their spacious house on the gated road with Victorian lamp-posts that defied time and the hoi-polloi. She hadn’t resigned from Waitrose; she could go back to her beloved fish counter. Many settled for a compromise that lowered the tidemark of happiness but was better than nothing.

  ‘What did you get?’

  ‘Get?’ She didn’t want Ricky to have the fish. Nor Andy.

  ‘I’m being practical, girlfriend.’ The street accent ill fitted the privately educated lawyer. ‘Your mum’s will – what’s your share? Don’t tell me the fish tank.’

  ‘Dad disinherited me.’ Freddy didn’t say how she’d dared hope her mum would call her home. They would sing songs from The Little Mermaid, go to Mass on Sea Sundays, dive and soar with the fish in the tank. Freddy had never said how, when Sarah and she were sipping wine on the box-hedge-delineated patio, she’d longed for this grotto. Seabed light drifting through the coloured plastic, the morphing glow of the lava lamps. She and her mum dwelt under the sea in a shell-encrusted world without Fred Power. When the film ended, they’d be sad, as if seeing it for the first time, when Princess Ariel chose to live on land. ‘Stupid girl,’ Reenie Power would sigh. ‘Stupid, stupid girl.’

  ‘You are kidding me?’ Sarah broke the reverie. ‘You said your father cut you out, but it’s your mother who’s died.’

  ‘It’s what Dad wanted. Mum didn’t go against him.’

  ‘That’s outrageous. Stupid woman.’ Sarah put up a vaguely apologetic hand. ‘Seriously, we’ll contest. Especially if it’s an old will and there are no accompanying notes giving any reasoning for the disinheritance. Does it say, “My daughter is a raging dyke so gets nothing”? Mind you, that crap wouldn’t be a first,’ Sarah raged at Brad the hamster.

  ‘I told you. It was when I came out. Mum was a strict Catholic. Dad used it when it suited him. Give Brad here.’ Freddy took the small creature. Animals were promised a tranquil stay at Sunnyside.

  ‘Je-sus! Being gay is not reasonable? This is insane. We could go for the house, a chunk of the business, maybe loss of earnings for the last twenty-two years.’ Sarah was off the blocks.

  ‘I don’t want to live here.’ Freddy nestled Brad in the crook of her neck. He was definitely low, no doubt missing Karen and Daniel. She had always believed that the creatures knew when their holidays would end. Did Brad sense that his family no longer existed?

  ‘Naturally not,’ Sarah purred. ‘But you could gut it, remodernise and let it to get the costs back, then sell.’ She arched her eyebrows at the covered windows. ‘We’ll argue that your mother should have made reasonable provision for all her children.’

  Sarah’s favourite theme was for Freddy to stop working – as a partner in a law firm, Sarah could support them both – but not to be a housewife: they had Ocado and a cleaner. Go to uni, use your brain. This prospect diluted by the stream of spa vouchers, treat yourself to a massage, it’s what you deserve, babes and the gym membership on birthdays. Sarah wanted a trophy wife, Freddy would tell her when they argued.

  ‘I won’t contest the will.’ Freddy followed the progress of a rainbow fish. It flicked and darted about Flounder. She wanted to be among the rocks and ornamental sea creatures. This time it wasn’t Fred Power she would be escaping from.

  24

  TONI

  Toni stopped outside the Co-op and nearly fell out of the Jeep when a squall of spitting rain whipped the door from her hold. She went into the shop.

  The woman on the till had eyes pinned on the lads fussing around the offy section. None looked old enough to brush their teeth on their own, but Toni knew they would be debating which of them got to slip a bottle of spirits down their boxers. Idiots. Their future was clear to see. Off duty, she dipped down the confectionery aisle.

  Mars? Snickers? Faced with the array of sweets, she blanked. Crunchie bar? Her blood was zinging, heart rate increasing, practically punching her ribs. The best feeling. Toni knew there was a camera above the chiller cabinet that pointed at the sweets. She was blocking its view. From where she stood, she could see that the cashier was concentrating on the kids, who were too stupid to see the CCTV focusing on them from the till. Or that a copper had just walked in.

  Since Karen Munday’s murder, despite the police withholding their suspicions, rumour was rife that Karen’s son had killed her. All Newhaven’s teenagers were deemed the Devil’s foot-soldiers.

  Toni hadn’t waited for Ricky to come out from the interview. She had left before the end. They had him at the crime scene. Either Ricky had gone to the loo or he had murdered Karen. Toni’s money was on the former. She trusted Ricky.

  Toni was sure Ricky had not touched Karen. The motive simply wasn’t there. He had nothing to gain and lots to lose. Ricky had been a natural fisherman, and they didn’t grow on trees. Or among the seaweed. That Daniel had become skilled at gutting and scaling didn’t go in his favour; although the murder was strangulation, it showed the boy had no difficulty killing and dismembering a creature. Of course, Ricky had that against him, too, but Daniel had motive. Toni wished she could have coached Ricky for his interview. Obviously, he was innocent, but almost because of that, he was wide open to looking as guilty as hell. Malcolm had said everything you did was out of character until you did it. Murder was no exception. Unfairly, she felt cross with Ricky.

  Three months off forty, Toni had accepted she’d never do the marriage and kids thing. Not that she’d ever wanted it. You didn’t bring a kid into this harsh world and then expose it to grief. Then Ricky Power rocked up. The little brother of one of her best friends had turned into a young Jack Nicholson. Two years in, he’d just broached the idea of living together. She’d said she’d think about it, but both of them kept forgetting to give it airtime. If Toni was honest with herself, she might say that Ricky Power was the best thing to happen to her. But Toni was rarely honest with herself.

  Toni opted for a
Snickers. Turning her shoulder to the camera for a split second, she took two bars, the action so nifty it was as if the Snickers defied gravity. She flicked a wrist to check her watch and propelled one bar down her sleeve, nearly to the crook of her elbow. She faced the camera and then, on an apparent whim, snatched up a Mars bar. She returned the Snickers in her hand to the shelf in full view of the lens. At the till the woman, labelled ‘Trish’, was still glaring at the boys.

  ‘Just this.’ Toni dropped the Mars bar onto the counter by a charity box for lifeboats. She gave Trish the right money, chucked a couple of pound coins into the box and flashed her badge at her. ‘Let me sort this.’ She sauntered over to the group.

  ‘If you’re planning to wait until you come of age to get that vodka, you’ve got years yet. Bugger off home to bed, lads.’ Toni flipped open her badge wallet.

  ‘You going to arrest us?’ The kid could be no more than thirteen, but a knowing look in his eyes and the set of his jaw gave him another decade.

  ‘If you do that Smirnoff, I will bang you in solitary until you learn how to do up your shoelaces.’ She gave an obese boy – the one she guessed had been nominated to conceal the bottle – a death stare.

  He went a dangerous red colour. ‘We ain’t done nothing.’

  ‘Let’s keep it that way.’ Toni circled around them as if they were sheep and herded them to the exit. ‘It would spoil my evening to have to process you lot down at the nick.’ She put her hands on her hips to make the most of her well below intimidating height.

  When the kids had gone Toni hung about and exchanged a few unpleasantries about the youth of today with Trish. Back in the Jeep, she shook her sleeve and palmed the stolen Snickers. She unwrapped it and, eyeballing the boys, still loitering on the corner of Gibbon Road, took a generous bite. Revelling in the sugar rush, she texted Mags, I’ve got chocolate. Then, thinking to appeal to Mags’s ever-present guilt, It’s freezing!