Death of a Mermaid

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Terrible to disown your child,’ Malcolm said.

  ‘It was terrible.’ Toni shivered at the image of Freddy on their doorstep clutching a bulging plastic bag.

  ‘I wonder why Freddy’s dad kicked off.’ Malcolm screwed back the top of his water bottle.

  ‘Yeah, well…’ Freddy wasn’t the only one with a secret. It wouldn’t be Malcolm who heard it first. ‘Let’s just say, Fred Power was evil.’

  43

  MAGS

  Mags had found the fishing hook in a groove on the container floor, not that in the darkness she had seen what it was. Lying awake, restless fingers spidering behind the mattress, she’d felt something sharp. She’d imagined a wasp that had got through one of the holes and was sleeping with her. She welcomed any company. But her finger tasted of blood. More carefully, getting onto her knees, Mags had dislodged it.

  When at last the morning came, Mags held the metal object to the hole nearest to her and examined her find. She hated the idea of a fishing hook. A barb ripped into the fish’s mouth or, worse, was swallowed and shredded its insides. The phrase ‘to swallow something hook, line and sinker’ expressed gullibility. But fish knew nothing about trust or lies. Was she a fish on the end of a hook? Had someone fooled her, hook, line and sinker?

  She had sometimes gone with Toni and Freddie to fish off Newhaven pier. One of Toni’s rebellions against the nuns at Our Lady. Mags knew Toni had fished with her dad and, not believing in an afterlife, it was in the activities they had shared that she hoped to find him. Freddy had grown up filleting fish. It confused Mags, huddled with a book on a camp stool by the pier wall, that although she found fishing itself so brutal, the sight of Freddy reeling in her fishing rod was very attractive. Her hair blown back by the wind, slicker tied around her waist, her forearms strong as she battled with the rod. It gave Mags an ache that she didn’t want to understand.

  This hook was large. It couldn’t be for the kind of fish Toni and Freddy had tried to catch. Mags manoeuvred it through the hole then levered it back, tugging at the edges. The container was ribbed, sturdy; it would be difficult to damage. That was the point, it had to swing out of a ship’s hold on the end of a crane or survive a building site. But the metal between the ribbing was thinner and it gave as she dragged on it with the hook. The container thrummed with each tug. Mags held her breath. When she’d shouted earlier no one had come, but it didn’t mean her captor wasn’t nearby.

  Mags worked at the hole for what could have been hours or minutes, her feet jammed against the wall to steady her grip. The hook, perhaps for catching a shark or a whale, was stronger than the container and held its shape.

  She had increased the five-pence-piece-sized opening to the size of a two-pound coin. Mags slumped, weary and frightened, on the futon. It would take days to peel back enough metal to escape through the hole and she might not have that time. Then it struck her. She could only work on the metal between the ribs. At best an oblong. It was far too narrow to squeeze through. All she had done was pass the time.

  She fitted two fingers through the hole. Immediately, she heard sounds, as if her fingers were an aerial. Wind hustled the walls of her container. The humming of the mermaid choir. Cold air whipped her fingers. While her fingers were on the other side of the wall, a small part of her was free.

  Fearful that he would come soon, Mags concealed the hook beneath the futon. The barb tore the fabric. Who was doing this?

  Mags had dropped Edward. Her ex-assistant would easily disguise his voice on some app; he’d done silly voices at work. But he wasn’t up to furnishing a container and keeping her prisoner and he’d have had to tell her why she was locked up before now.

  The only person with reason for revenge was Freddy. Please, not Freddy. It was more likely a stranger. A psychopath.

  Mother Julian had spent much of her life alone. Mags had once dreamt of a similar life; she longed to live in communion with God. She shut her eyes and spoke Julian’s words.

  ‘“If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me.”’

  Was this a place in which Mags could be safe? Was she too bound up with fear to see? She shut her eyes and prayed, her fingers taking each bead of her rosary.

  Ave Maria, gratia plena

  Dominus tecum…

  Time passed. Decades. Mags’s lips moved silently. Her voice mingled with the Mermaids’. Toni, as always, a beat behind. Freddy’s arm was around her.

  Freddy. I love you.

  Her mind cleared. She knew who had imprisoned her. And she knew why.

  The container door shrieked back. This time Mags did not put the bag over her head. She clutched the fishhook and plunged at the figure silhouetted against the sky.

  44

  FREDDY

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Freddy told Sarah. ‘The police already suspect us...’ She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘Chill, babes, I’ve got this. The police have nothing on me or you.’ Sarah pulled the Alfa Romeo into the street and stopped outside what she’d taken to calling the Power House. ‘Where would I go?’

  ‘Liverpool?’

  ‘I couldn’t leave you with your brothers, and now this woman disappearing. Besides, I told your mate Toni I’d stay in Sussex.’

  ‘Quick, inside.’ Checking up and down the street, itself a sign of guilt if the police were watching the house, Freddy hustled Sarah into the lounge. There was a hole in the cage by the fish tank. ‘Nooo.’ She spun about.

  ‘What did I just say? They have no evidence. It was bluff.’ Sarah grabbed her.

  Freddy wrestled free and wailed, ‘Roddy’s escaped.’

  ‘Who’s Roddy?’ Sarah asked. ‘Is he a suspect?’

  Freddy pulled out her phone. She dropped to the carpet and peeped under the couch. Nothing, not even dust and fluff. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Devious little blighter, he could be anywhere.’

  ‘Roddy’s a guest.’ Sarah laughed. ‘Wow, he bit through bars. What is he – a rat?’

  ‘A degu.’

  ‘Is that a rude word?’

  ‘Degus are small, not unlike a rat actually, if, arguably, prettier.’ Freddy pulled out the television. She flapped back the curtains, noticing the hems she had helped her mum sew one rainy afternoon. She lifted the bucket of logs, spilling two on the shell-patterned carpet. ‘They’re supposed to be sociable and love a cuddle. Roddy is stand-offish and irritable. He can shoot out of his cage and run like the wind.’ David Bromyard or his wife had written ‘runs like the wind’ on the instructions.

  ‘You’ve obviously lost Roddy before.’ Sarah raised an eyebrow.

  ‘It’s in his instructions.’

  ‘Instructions?’ Sarah was peering under the sideboard.

  ‘Clients fill in an information sheet – diet, feeding habits, vet number. They sign a permission form in case the animal has to be put to sleep or needs urgent surgery.’

  ‘Your mum sounds like a sharp woman. She could have been landed with hefty vet bills or sued for feeding chocolate to a chinchilla.’ Sarah crooned, ‘Roddy. Come and get your beetroot.’

  Freddy was consumed with misery. Mags had disappeared, Reenie was dead. Mags and her mum would have taken a lost pet in their stride. Toni too. Freddy had admired Mags’s ability to sort stuff – she sorted Karen Munday – as if, with God on her side, Mags could handle anything. Not that Mags had seen it that way. If Mags were here, Sarah and Freddy would not be suspects in a murder case. Murder. Freddy couldn’t bear it. The world had turned upside down. If Mags were here, it would mean she was alive.

  ‘Roddy’s owner is due to collect him this morning. I have to find him.’ Freddy should move the search into the kitchen. But if Roddy was in there, amidst cupboards with gaps, the pots and pans, she’d never find him.

  ‘Game on.’ Sarah began pulling cushions off the chair and the couch. Used to pulling apart police cases, this was her territory. ‘Seems rather a pointl
ess pet. William Morris said things should be useful or beautiful. Sorry, Rodders, you’re not ticking either box.’

  ‘Roddy is sweet.’ Freddy felt the need to defend the missing rodent, although, thanks to her unease with his owner, she’d given him scant attention. ‘Mrs Bromyard’s had him six years.’ The idea of her dad going out on Bromyard’s trawler still needled at her. Even if he had lied about being seasick, he’d never have submitted to obeying a captain. But why would Bromyard lie? She flopped down on the couch.

  ‘Some people hate to be touched or to touch. The sort to have an alligator in the bath. Maybe Mrs B’s a cold fish. Pardon the pun.’ Sarah said this whenever she used a marine metaphor. ‘Rod-eee.’ She crawled along the skirting board and reached the television. ‘Hey, I’ve found him. He is sweet. He’s washing his face with his paws. Get a ruler, or a stick or something.’

  ‘I looked there.’ Freddy was listless.

  ‘I’ll oust him. Come on, Mr Roddy, playtime’s over.’

  ‘Wait, lure him with a treat.’ Freddy passed Sarah another beetroot bite from inside Roddy’s cage.

  Sarah closed off one end of the alley between the television cabinet and the wall and propped the cassette cover for The Little Mermaid at the other. ‘Line up another cage or we’ll go through this all again.’ She lowered the treat towards the degu. ‘Roderick, I advise that you settle. This is the best offer you’ll get.’

  Roddy preened his whiskers, apparently unimpressed by the beetroot. No one moved.

  The mantelpiece clock ticked. Neither woman spoke. As if eager Darwinians, they observed Roddy nibble at his flank then, like an aproned Beatrix Potter character, stand on his hind legs, front paws together as if about to offer a cup of tea.

  ‘He’s rather endearing,’ Sarah whispered. ‘I’d like him as a pet.’

  ‘Not if he spent his time behind the furniture, you wouldn’t,’ Freddy said. ‘We could be here all day.’

  ‘Who’s a pretty boy?’ Sarah warbled. Freddy recalled the funny, playful Sarah from the early days. Before Sarah had wanted more from Freddy than Freddy could give: marriage, children and to be the only woman Freddy had ever loved.

  ‘Don’t grab him by his tail.’ Freddy was reading Roddy’s instructions. ‘They come off and don’t grow back. Christ, I’d forgotten that.’

  ‘Poor chap.’ Sarah inched the Little Mermaid cover closer to Roddy.

  Quick as a flash, he sped towards the other end.

  ‘I knew he’d do that.’ Freddy was dancing back and forth like a goalkeeper waiting for a penalty. As if, should Roddy get out of the alley, she could anticipate which way he’d go.

  ‘So did I.’ Sarah was calm as, Roddy nestling in her cupped hands, she got to her feet. ‘Are you named after Rod Stewart?’ she asked him. Roddy sat upright in her palm as if perched on a lily leaf. He ducked forward and pushed his face against Sarah’s chin. She cried out with delight, ‘He kissed me.’

  ‘Don’t let him go.’ As Roddy gnawed at the beetroot bite, Freddy suspected the kiss was cupboard love, but it was reward enough for Sarah. She grabbed Roddy’s carrier. ‘Stick him in there – he’s going soon anyway. I’m not risking him wrecking another cage.’

  ‘He likes it with me.’ Sarah sat down on the couch.

  God save us. Freddy put the carrier next to Sarah. She took her mum’s chair by the fish tank. Half an hour until David Bromyard was due. She needed to get Sarah to leave. She pressed her face to the aquarium glass. A gold gourami flittered around the prince and princess. The figures who would never kiss held for ever at each end of the boat. Freddy remembered the first time she had wanted to kiss Mags. They’d been in the living room, side by side on the couch, the warmth of Mags’s thigh against her own through her jeans. At fourteen, she hadn’t kissed anyone, unless you counted Tony Stokes, a fisherman’s son who she’d snogged behind the fishery, which Freddy did not. Her whole body had thrilled at the idea of being in the boat with Mags, of pulling her towards her and feeling her mouth against hers.

  ‘Was she the love of your life?’ Sarah was watching her.

  ‘Who?’ Freddy felt the ground give way. The shell pattern was all around her, the bubbling of the oxygen pump deafening.

  ‘Margaret McKee.’ Sarah stroked Roddy’s head with a forefinger. ‘Mags.’

  In the beginning, when Sarah and she were in love, they’d done that thing of swapping stories of past escapades, revelling in the rerun of traumas that led them to the heady present. Beyond Sarah saying Mags was mad to let Freddy get away, after Freddy had told her the story of Mags Sarah had never referred to her again.

  ‘Yes. She was,’ Freddy said.

  ‘Is that why you’re here?’ Sarah brought Roddy up to her face and rested her cheek against his whiskers.

  ‘I came because of my mum.’

  ‘That’s an answer to a different question. Your mother is dead.’

  The fish tank bubbled. From far off came the hoot of the Newhaven ferry coming into port. Although it was the morning, Freddy wanted to light a fire. The damp that lay in wait within the empty house had chilled the room.

  ‘I need to know she’s safe. It’s not like Mags to disappear like this.’

  ‘How do you know what she’s like? You haven’t seen her for twenty years.’ Sarah gave the degu a parting kiss and lowered him into his carrier. She moved it around so that the door was facing away from her, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. ‘Or have you?’

  The unexpected question was like a mallet blow. Freddy rubbed the side of her head, as if she’d had been hit. ‘I’ve seen Mags since I got here. At my mum’s burial. She suggested meeting, but well…’ Freddy couldn’t finish. In the blinding sunshine, close together, surrounded by gravestones. The exchange had been over before it began. She had gone over every word each had uttered, scrutinising them for nuance and hope. Now she relived the crushing disappointment when the woman by the lunette battery was Sarah and not Mags.

  ‘How did you find out about your mum? When I bumped into your brother in the car park, he said he hadn’t texted you.’ From Sarah’s expression, Freddy could see that she already knew the answer.

  ‘Mags must have got my number off Toni. When I last saw her, I didn’t own a mobile phone. Nor did she. Sarah, don’t do this.’

  ‘Sounds like she wanted to try again.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Freddy hadn’t dared consider this. She felt herself flush.

  ‘Why do you think she wanted to see you then?’

  ‘Probably to tell me about my mum, her last days or something. Maybe she hated how things were left and wanted closure. To make peace with God.’ Freddy was furious at the coil of possibility burning in her stomach. Had Mags been working up to telling Freddy she loved her?

  ‘If this Mags did want to start again with you, would you agree?’

  The hesitation was too long.

  Sarah got up. She paused by the carrier, touching it. ‘What was it that Princess Diana said about there being three in the relationship?’

  ‘Marriage.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Diana’s actual word was “marriage”.’ Freddy could have kicked herself for bringing up the idea of getting married. Although she hadn’t mentioned it for a while, Freddy knew marriage was what Sarah wanted. The long haul. Freddy blurted out, ‘Mags is missing.’

  ‘The police think she’s dead.’

  ‘I know.’ Freddy saw a flicker of shame in Sarah’s face. While Sarah could never resist a barb, she always regretted it. Sarah was hurt. In retreat, she fired at Freddy from her cover.

  ‘When you arrived that night’ – the words came out of nowhere – ‘did you see her?’

  ‘See who?’ Sarah was by the door.

  ‘Mags. Was she at the battery when you got there? Did you say something to her or—’ Freddy fumbled in a mental fog.

  Another long silence.

  ‘You. Make. Me. Sick.’ Sarah’s voice cracked. ‘Tell me, Frederica. What have the last tw
o years been about that you could ask me that?’

  ‘I don’t think…’ The hours since DS Lane questioned Freddy had been agonising. She was in a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake. She wished herself on a rock beneath the waves.

  *

  ‘I’ve come for Roddy. I’m sorry I’m here so late. I’ve just got on shore. My wife would have come, but it’s her Weight Watchers night.’ Mr Bromyard pulled a face.

  ‘No problem.’ Freddy tried to smile, but her face felt Botox stiff. The questions she wanted to ask Bromyard swarmed in her head. Why did my dad take me out on your boat? What were you whispering about in the fishery? But something was stopping her from speaking.

  ‘Roddy’s fine with the wife, comes when she calls, does circus acts. With me he’s a little tyke. I had a nasty nip off him and he’s a tinker for escaping. Did he behave?’

  ‘He was perfect, Mr Bromyard.’ Owners of pets with teeth or wings rarely welcomed a truthful response. Freddy placed the carrier on the couch. Bromyard was counting out notes from a wad of money. Like her dad, it seemed he carried big amounts of cash on him.

  ‘Call me David.’ David Bromyard scratched his five o’clock shadow with a rasping sound. Something glinted in the greenish subterranean light.

  ‘My dad had a ring like that.’ Freddy pointed at his hand. ‘My brother Andy wears it.’ She was compensating for her diffidence by being extra nice.

  ‘I know.’ David Bromyard fiddled with the ring. Had Andy given it to Bromyard? Or more like, sold it. ‘If I’d had a say, I’d have wanted you to have his ring.’ He made a strange noise, between a laugh and choking. His face was slick with perspiration. The hand with the ring was shaking. He was ill.

  ‘Why have you got the same ring? Dad said he had it specially made.’ Something bad was about to happen. Sarah was on her way to Liverpool. Toni was tied up with finding Mags. Andy had been wearing the ring the last time she’d seen him. Did Andy owe Bromyard money? Who could Freddy call?