Toni believed that Andy had gone to Karen’s intending to kill her but found Daniel there with Daisy. Having discovered the faked logbook, Daniel guessed what was going on. Furious, he’d stormed out with Daisy in tow. Karen was left with Andy. That she was on the toilet suggested Karen had assumed Andy left with the youngsters. He had not. Why hadn’t he killed Daisy when he saw her in the hospital? Toni could only guess that, faced with a teenager little older than his own daughter, even Andy had a limit.
Andy could have strangled Karen spontaneously in the heat of the moment when she’d upped the blackmailing stakes. But he’d taken elaborate precautions before he’d gone to her house. From Freddy’s statement, Andy had said on the boat that he meant to murder her. He’d had no choice.
CCTV of the car park showed Andy plugging his car into the electric point on the forecourt of his house and going inside. He changed out of his light raincoat. A wider trawl of cameras in the vicinity showed a man in a black donkey jacket getting onto a Vespa scooter ten minutes away from Andy’s house. He’d ridden to Newhaven, murdered Karen and been back in Lewes within an hour. His wife accounted for the hour. Kirsty had heard Andy return, she said it wasn’t unusual for him to go straight into his ground-floor office. Upstairs, watching TV, she’d believed Andy was there all evening.
If Kirsty had lied, she was good. During her interview with Malcolm she’d remained impassive and factual. Not spousal loyalty, Toni knew; although Kirsty had accepted a share of the fishery, she’d made it clear to Freddy she was done with the Power family. She’d done an interview for Sun on Sunday. Kirsty was a fierce mother, bent on keeping a roof over her children’s heads.
That morning at Mass, Freddy had given the second reading, from the holy Gospel according to Luke. Father Pete had asked her to take over from Andy. Toni knew Freddy was in pieces, but she’d made it to the end. Like Ricky, Freddy was struggling with how to mourn a murderer.
‘“…worshipped him and then went back to Jerusalem full of joy…”’
It would be a long time until Freddy felt true joy.
‘My dad was gay.’ Freddy had met Toni at the end of the service after she’d taken the host and sipped the wine, the body and blood of Christ.
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ Toni had been wondering when and how to broach the thorny subject.
‘He had a long affair with a man called David Bromyard.’
They were strolling around Mary’s garden at the back of the church. Mags’s garden.
‘I saw a file.’ Toni had sat at the foot of Mary’s statue and told Freddy all she knew.
When she finished, Freddy got up. ‘I have to see someone.’
‘Father Pete?’ Toni wanted Freddy to be open about her faith. She couldn’t share it, but she could walk alongside her. If she could talk to the priest, it might help her. Father Pete seemed a relaxed and open kind of man; he didn’t strike Toni as a raving homophobe.
‘David Bromyard. I owe him an apology. I think he is probably a kind man.’
A kind man. Freddy’s own father had not been that.
Toni sat on the bench, her arms resting along the back. The cemetery sprawled away down the hill, the Downs stretching off for as far as the eyes could see. The gravestones shimmered in the heat. The day had begun misty and grey, but by the time they had come out of Mass the sky was blue, feathered with white clouds.
Toni let her gaze wander up the hill to where Reenie Power was buried. A lone wooden cross. If bodies did turn in their graves, Reenie’s would be spinning. One son drowned before he could be convicted of three murders and the attempted murder of his brother and sister. The other son in prison. Only her daughter would be a source of pride.
From Newhaven, Toni heard a distant clarion call. Freddy’s fish van. In a world where street callers had all but vanished, the milkman, the onion man, the rag and bone man and the window cleaner’s chamois superseded by long-handled brushes and snaking hoses, in this town, the mobile fishmonger survived.
Freddy was building up the round. She had reopened the small animal hotel. She had declared she would remain single. Her relationships would be with her animal and bird guests. She was keeping Brad, Karen Munday’s hamster. However, when Toni had gone to the house last night, bearing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a woman called Rosie, who Freddy introduced – ridiculously – as a fish customer, was planted on the settee. Toni pretended Malcolm was calling and left. If there was an afterlife – which there wasn’t – Mags could gain comfort from seeing that Freddy was doing OK.
Karen and Daniel were having a double headstone. Gold lettering, marble. The funeral was in a fortnight, the police having released their bodies. The Mundays were doing Karen and Daniel proud. Horse-drawn hearses with a wake to end all wakes at Seaford golf club. Toni would go with Freddy. Rejected in different ways all her life, Karen had always battled for a foothold. The Mermaids had administered another rejection. Karen’s story was of betrayal and treachery. Toni owed her.
There was no grave for Mags. Only the sea. After Mags’s Mass – they had that hurdle next week – Toni and Freddy would scatter petals on the shoreline at Newhaven. The petals would be carried out to sea. They were getting a plaque to go beside the grave of Mags’s parents. In the shadow of the yew tree near the entrance.
Toni made her way back down the hill to her car by the bronze statue of the boy. She paused and looked back. The gravestones shimmered in the sunlight. Through the chapel arch she imagined a figure hurrying towards her. Mags.
Toni turned and, leaving the dead behind, drove along the C7 towards Newhaven. Her phone rang. ‘Guv, it’s me. A body’s been found in a house in Peacehaven. The death might be suspicious, Uniform want us to take a look. I can go if you’d rather—’ Malcolm would think she couldn’t face another death.
‘I’m on my way,’ Toni said.
*
Sunlight gleamed off the bronze boy. The headstones rising up the hill towards the Downs were white against the green of the summer grass. The Seven Sisters ferry glided out of the harbour and plied the English Channel towards France, seagulls crying its wake.
Acknowledgements
So many generously offered their knowledge and experience for Death of a Mermaid. I must emphasise that any factual errors are mine.
As ever, my heartfelt thanks to retired Detective Chief Superintendent Stephen Cassidy of the Metropolitan Police. Stephen has for years given me valuable help. His professional and informed description of the best policing inspires all my novels.
Jane Rivers of the Creature Comforts Small Pet Hotel outlined the ins and outs of running her fabulous establishment. I’ve tried to reflect Jane’s high standard of care for her furred and feathered guests in Reenie Power’s seaside guesthouse. Thank you, Jane.
I’m grateful to Steve Watts for a fascinating dawn visit behind the scenes of a Waitrose fish counter. Freddy Power’s fishmonger skills and top customer service owes much to Steve. As does Freddy’s love of Cullen skink, now my favourite dish.
My thanks to Chris Bish for sharing his thoughts on fish and crime fiction. Everyone at MCB Seafoods in Newhaven made me very welcome. (Mike Bish’s murder idea involving the freezer tunnel is up my sleeve for the future…). Chris gave me a fascinating tour of his fishery. The rest I made up.
I’ve long wanted to write a novel featuring a mobile fishmonger. Every Wednesday this solitary writer flies outside for an exchange of fish and banter by Tim Woodward’s van. Thanks to Tim for sharing the minutiae of his business and for suggesting I talk to Chris Bish.
Thanks to Miranda Kemp (Sussex Community Foundation) for putting me in touch with Steve Watts. And giving me information about Newhaven.
The team at the Newhaven Coastwatch station took me around their cliff-top tower overlooking the English Channel. The NCI save lives by monitoring our coasts. We need more of them. (www.nci.org.uk)
Thanks to Lisa Holloway for musical suggestions and specifically for The Little Mermaid.
&nb
sp; The novel features the Newhaven lifeboat. RNLI crews risk their lives to rescue those in trouble at sea. (www.rnli.org/find-my-nearest/lifeboat-stations/newhaven-lifeboat-station.) They do so in this novel.
I used to live in Newhaven. I’ve spent hours exploring the Victorian streets and the harbour. Thank you to Stefan Storoszko for opening the Newhaven Museum on a cold January morning for me to ferret in the archives.
My gratitude to Jenny Bourne-Taylor for keeping me inspired.
My editor, Laura Palmer, is the best. I owe much to Laura’s forensic, intelligent editing. My thanks to the special team at Head of Zeus for everything else.
Thank you to Georgina Capel Associates, specifically, George, Rachel, Irene and Simon. And to Philippa Brewster for her steadfast encouragement.
Every novel I write depends on Melanie Lockett’s love and support and her eagle eye. If it’s rubbish, she tells me.
My writing day is nothing without a latte and a brioche from Libby’s Patisserie. Thanks to Libby and Lola for keeping me sane around eleven a.m.
I’m always spurred on by my readers. Not least Shirley Cassidy (The Detective’s Mother) and the novel-devouring sisters, Juliet and Helen Eve.
This novel features characters with varying relationships to Catholicism. I’m very grateful to Domenica de Rosa for her generous and meaningful introduction to the Catholic church.
Death of a Mermaid is for Domenica, my treasured friend and fellow crime-novelist.
Lewes, United Kingdom
2020
About the Author
LESLEY THOMSON grew up in west London. Her first novel, A Kind of Vanishing, won the People’s Book Prize in 2010. Her second novel, The Detective’s Daughter, was a #1 bestseller and the resulting series has sold over 750,000 copies. Lesley divides her time between Sussex and Gloucestershire. She lives with her partner and her dog.
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