by Jess Kidd
“Never.”
“And you’re certain your sister never met anyone down on the beach?”
“There was only ever the two of us.”
“Yourself and Deirdre?”
I nodded.
“Every single time you went?”
I nodded.
“You’re sure of that, Maud?”
I nodded.
The guard nodded too, but with less certainty, as if she wasn’t convinced by my answer but it would have to do for now. “You’re off to your new school now?”
“I am.”
We were staying with Granny until Deirdre came back. Granny had enrolled me at the local school because just waiting for Deirdre all day every day wasn’t healthy for anyone.
The guard gestured at the brush and the bobble in my hand. “Will I do your hair?”
I nodded.
She had me stand in front of her chair as she plaited. Then she turned me to face her and put the plait forwards on my shoulder and brushed out the tail end, curling it around her finger. I watched her hands move: gentle, capable hands with strong fingers and neat, square nails.
“There.”
“Thank you.” I felt my plait. This would be the nicest my hair had been since Mammy had stopped doing it.
The guard smiled so that it lit up her eyes. Her eyes were hazel and bulgy and kind. I liked her.
“Do you get to drive the car fast with the sirens on?” I asked.
Mammy walked into the kitchen. She had shadow-ringed, inward-looking eyes and a mouth she held pressed in a thin hard line, as if she was trying to stop flies getting into it. She’d ruined her good cream dressing gown with a coffee stain down the front. She exhaled cigarette smoke and threw the guard a look.
The guard smiled at me. “We take turns driving the car.”
“You an’ him?” I pointed at the other guard, who was outside the back door talking into his radio.
The guard nodded.
“Could you get me to school on time for my first lesson?”
Mammy let out a hiss of air and looked up at the heavens. She screwed her cigarette out vehemently in a saucer and leant up against the sink.
“Mrs. Drennan?”
Mammy turned on the tap and put her hands under it, palms upwards, as if she was trying to catch water.
“Mrs. Drennan?”
“Just get her out of my sight,” she said.
CHAPTER 8
“And you say Gabriel Flood wore loafers?”
“Yes, but how is that relevant, Renata?”
Renata is especially glamorous today, clad in an appliquéd romper suit and feathered mules. Instead of her usual headscarf she has plumped for her Rita wig, the deep auburn chiming perfectly with the emerald rhinestones on her epaulets. She looks out of place against the homely backdrop of her kitchen; she really ought to be propping up a slot machine in Las Vegas with a pocketful of dimes.
“Loafers are a murderer’s choice of footwear. Don’t you know that, Maud? Quiet footsteps and hardly a trace of a print, especially when you tie plastic bags around your feet.”
Her makeup is more extravagant than usual too. To her workaday face she has added shimmering cheekbones and fake eyelashes, which give her the appearance of having harnessed a pair of fitful spiders. I vaguely wonder what the occasion is.
“A nice smart flat-soled loafer is easy to hose down. None of those grips you get on a trainer that just hog the DNA,” Renata continues, sure in her convictions.
“Now Gabriel is a murderer too?”
Renata fixes me with a glare, as if I’m willfully annoying her. “I didn’t say that. But murdering usually runs in the family; it’s an inherited condition, like a squint.”
“Is that really the case, Renata?”
She takes a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabs her forehead. Wigs often make her overheated and bad-tempered.
“It’s a scientific fact,” she says. “So the old man is right: his son probably does want to kill him.”
“Then he can get in line,” I murmur.
“You have to ask why his son wants to kill him?”
“Because his son is a psychopath, like his daddy?”
“He still needs a motive, Maud.”
I take a biscuit from the tin on the kitchen table. “Since when do psychopaths need a motive?”
“Since always; even if it’s because it’s a Thursday or the voices just said so. Gabriel’s motive is easy.” Renata is solemn-eyed. “He wants to kill Daddy in retribution for murdering his mummy and the little faceless girl.”
“The girl Gabriel has no recollection of?”
“He’s lying. You said yourself, Maud, that the children look like siblings.”
“Conjecture only.”
Renata frowns. “Well, both Mary and the little girl have had their faces erased on the photographs. Mary met with a fishy accident. It stands to reason that the girl was wiped out too.”
“And you’d put your money on the savage old misanthrope up at the house there?”
Renata looks superior. “Bluebeard? Why not?”
“Two defaced snapshots and Mr. Flood is a serial killer. Really, Renata?”
Renata smiles benignly. “Don’t believe me. It is only a matter of time before more clues surface. The identity, perhaps, of the little girl.”
“Don’t bank on it.”
“Or her whereabouts.” She waits for me to take the bait. When I don’t, she continues. “Bluebeard is guarding far more than just rubbish.”
“I don’t want to discuss this, Renata.”
“Corpses are like stones, Maud. They want to be found. Ask any farmer and they’ll tell you: stones always rise. Look at the victims of Arctic Bob.”
“Renata—”
“Arctic Bob: the Colorado truck driver who kept his victims in chest freezers. When he went on holiday to Florida one year the electricity supply to his carport broke down. His neighbors found the remains.” She glances at me. “It was the smell.”
“That’s enough,” I say.
“Some of his victims broke their fingers trying to get out. Even grown police officers cried when they found those poor people defrosting, all twelve of them. It was the terror in their eyes, you see, staring out through the bags of discounted chicken wings. And the air thick with flies and the ground awash with the worst kind of melt water.”
“I’m leaving—”
“Has Mr. Flood got a chest freezer? Maybe the little girl is in there? You should check the outbuildings.”
“I’ll do no such thing. There are no dead children in chest freezers.”
Renata roots around in the biscuit tin. “Would it kill you to search around the place a bit? You know, be proactive and not wait for Mary Flood to drop hints in your lap?”
She avoids my eyes, picking out a garibaldi and dipping it in her coffee. She is a picture of indifference.
“Why would I want to do that?”
“To prove you are right and I am wrong and that the little faceless girl is alive and well and Mary really did take an accidental tumble. To lay this case to rest, darling, so to speak.”
“And then you’ll stop harassing me with your fictional crime case and telling me your horrible tales of murder?”
Her grin is lavish. “Absolutely.”
“You swear on the immortal soul of Johnny Cash?”
Renata looks gravely up to Heaven. “May God Preserve and Keep Him.” She crosses the glittery breast of her jumpsuit, just like a good Catholic would.
* * *
TRUE TO her word Renata refrains from discussing murder and we enjoy a peaceful evening. Now and again she peers over at me and bites her lip as she sits on the living room sofa knitting gloves for retired fishermen. It is appropriate that Renata cares for old seafarers; sometimes I wonder about her rolling landlocked gait and her black brigand’s eyes. All she needs is a parrot and an eye patch.
I close my eyes. The room is silent but for the television on
low and the pernickety click of Renata’s needles.
Mostly Renata knits to keep her hands busy when she misses her pipe. To her credit she stays off the Borkum Riff these days, although now and again I catch a bitter smoky waft and I feel sure that Renata has kept her pipe carefully stowed away where her sister can’t find it. Pipe smoking was a habit Renata developed hanging around shipyards during her Rotherhithe boyhood, along with her ability to eat eels with relish. Renata’s past is complicated and surprising; I have never asked where she learnt to knit.
I watch her fingers move with an implausible deftness. It is as if her hands are operating independently from her, cursed to fuss and jab at the wool for all eternity.
But her mind isn’t on the wool: it’s on Mary Flood and the faceless child. Her happy scowl tells me my friend is thinking of dark deeds.
“So, no word from Mary Flood today?”
“I thought we were talking about something other than death and murder and bones for a change? You swore.”
Renata puts down her knitting. “We’ll talk about the living, then.” She regards me coyly. “A man called today for you; he was very alive.” She puts a lewd spin on the word.
“The satellite TV repairman?”
The satellite TV repairman lives with his mother and participates in historical reenactments (Roundhead). When he last visited, two pairs of knickers went missing from my bathroom radiator. Renata has encouraged this match due to some folkloric notion of warding off the certain evils visited on our community by my prolonged spinsterhood.
Renata shakes her head. “No, this one was a hunky blondie.” She returns to her knitting.
“Did he leave his name?” I ask, although I already know it.
“He did. Then we drank vermouth and he fixed the bathroom blind. Lovely man. Well muscled.” Renata looks at me. “It was Sam, you know, the threatened care worker who went mad or back to Hull.”
Hence the wig and the glad rags. I can just imagine her scuttling off to change then returning to drape herself nonchalantly over furniture. A woman transformed, exuding sudden star quality.
“And you’re only telling me this now?”
She shrugs, not in the least repentant.
“Did Sam say what he wanted to talk to me about?”
“At first it wasn’t clear why he was here, either to Sam or to me. Until we did his cards.” She frowns. “Major Arcana and Swords such as you wouldn’t believe. Justice, Judgment, and the Wheel of Fortune, all upside down.” She purses her lips. “But he took it well.”
“Did he say anything about the house? About Mr. Flood?”
“No, but I told him that we’re onto Mr. Flood for killing his wife, along with a young unidentified female relative.” She keeps her head down, rummaging in her knitting bag.
“Why did you tell him that? What if he’s still in a delicate state of mind, after the assault? He could believe it.”
Renata pulls out a ball of lurid pink wool; she squeezes it, then, satisfied, picks up her needles. “Sam isn’t delicate at all. If by delicate you mean mental.”
I stare at her in despair.
She begins to cast off. “He came here today to tell you to stop working at Bridlemere. He likes you.” She smirks. “He’s worried for your safety.”
“Sam said that?” I ask.
She pettishly knits a few more stitches, then glances up at me. “He thinks you are in grave danger from Mr. Flood.”
I can’t help but smile. “And aren’t you worried for my safety, Renata? Sending me off digging around Bluebeard’s lair.”
“I know you; why would I be worried?”
“Thanks.”
“You are like me, Maud. Drop us, we bounce. Kick us, we bounce.” She puts her knitting down. “Besides. There’s a puzzle to be solved here, an intrigue. Do we run away?”
I don’t answer.
Renata nods, gratified. “As you know, the best things in life are usually a little dangerous.” She extracts a full bottle of krupnik from the side of her chair with a smile.
CHAPTER 9
“Meeting her boyfriend, is she? In a rush to get down there, is she? End of your visit to Granny’s, is it? Making the most of it, is she?”
Noel Noone always asked four questions to one, for he never had anyone to talk to. Nobody ever visited his kiosk. Even so, he was there all day, every day.
Old Noel sold cigarettes, sweets, deck chairs (try putting one of those up; the wind would laugh its bollocks off), fishing nets with cane handles and buckets and spades (blue or pink, square or round turrets). He had a kettle out the back, and he’d make you a tea but the milk was chancy and you had to stay and drink it in front of him so he could have the cup back. The cups had drippings on the outside; we were uncertain as to whether he ever washed them.
Old Noel called Deirdre Sugarcheeks and Deirdre called him a dirty old fecker.
He had cornered me near the secondhand books, pinching the top of my arm, squeezing my earlobe, and circling my wrist with his grabbling fingers. And all the while talking in his strange, high, giddy voice with the spits coming out of his bluish lips.
Old Noel regarded me intently with one eye. His other eye was trained on Deirdre as she stood outside the door to the kiosk. Deirdre had her back to us. An angel framed against the sunlit tarmac of the car park, her brown hair burnished, pinned up, wispy curls falling on her narrow neck nape.
I saw him see this with his wall eye.
He saw her slim shoulder blades under her dress and the rouge on her cheeks. She’d picked a spot on her chin; he saw this too. For after all Deirdre wasn’t perfect, although she looked it in some lights.
Deirdre kicked the door frame with her sandal, surveyed the sky with an expression of profound boredom, and then opened her handbag. It was beautiful: heart shaped and made from red leather. Deirdre let me touch it once and showed me the inside. It was lined with pink silk and had a gold popper to keep it closed. The strap was a fine slim ribbon of a thing. Jimmy O’Donnell had given it to her, for no other reason than he felt like it.
Jimmy O’Donnell was Mammy’s special friend. They had gone to the pictures together when they were kids. Then they grew up and Mammy moved away, married Daddy and had us. One day, when we were back visiting Granny, Jimmy asked Mammy to go to the pictures with him again. After that, Jimmy was around all the time.
Deirdre said she would rip the head off me if I breathed a word to anyone about Jimmy giving her the bag.
I loved Jimmy O’Donnell less from that moment.
Jimmy with his long hair and dark laughing eyes and the fast car that he’d drive from town to coast and back again just to spend an hour with us.
It was a curse, Deirdre’s handbag, for with its arrival came the departure of Jimmy.
Now Jimmy no longer gave us piggybacks out along the field, or sat with us in the kitchen pulling faces behind Mammy’s back, or gave us money to buy sweets. Now Jimmy visited less and less, and when he did, he and Mammy argued and he left with his tires tearing up the gravel.
Deirdre took bubble gum out of her handbag and snapped it shut. She chewed, moving from heel to toe on the tarmac, wanting to be gone. She blew a few experimental bubbles; they grew and collapsed, sticky pink. She gathered the ruptured gum with thumb and forefinger and pushed it back into her mouth.
Old Noel wet his lip and gave my wrist a quick press. He was waiting for a reply, impatient for a reply. One of his eyes watched Deirdre and the other watched me.
I spoke the words Deirdre told me to speak slowly and carefully. “We have never seen another living soul on the beach. There is only ever us.”
Deirdre turned and looked at me over her shoulder. Perhaps she narrowed her eyes. Perhaps she gave me a half smile or a scowl. I can’t remember.
I can hardly even remember her face now, just the bag. A heart of red leather and pink silk, a gold popper and a thin, thin, strawberry-shoelace strap.
Old Noel bent closer and spat in my ear, “I don�
�t believe you, Twinkle.”
Then he straightened up and winked at Deirdre, as well he might, for in less than a week she would be gone.
CHAPTER 10
I will kill Larkin, for he is driving me insane. Like his master, he torments me from morning to afternoon. Both of them, skulking and nosing in shopping bags, leaving their foxy reek in corridors and corners, tripping me up and watching me. I threaten them both outside. Mr. Flood, in a coat and a pair of ratty slippers, roosts on the sunlounger. Larkin stretches out at his feet. Sometimes one or other of the cats joins them, prancing just near enough to cause offense or jumping in the branches of the overhanging trees. Sometimes Larkin gives chase, causing caterwauls.
They both seem to be immune to the smell emanating from the wall of rubbish bags I have been stealthily lining up along the pathway in readiness for the skip that is coming tomorrow.
“Will you come out, Drennan, and sit with me?” Mr. Flood shouts.
When I take his lime cordial out to him, he winks at me.
Since Gabriel’s visit we have developed an uneasy sort of camaraderie. I laugh at his jokes and he tolerates my wholesale disposal of his possessions.
Only sometimes I catch a certain look in his eye as he watches me clearing and sorting, bagging and dragging. Then I realize: I’m like a bird, a busy bird, hopping between a lion’s paws, inches away from tooth and claw. One wrong move and I’ll get it.
So I don’t drop my guard: if he comes at me with a hurley, I’ll be ready.
I pull up Gabriel’s wonky bar stool and sit down.
Mr. Flood salutes me with his glass and gives me the alligator smile of a TV-advert denture wearer: jauntily fraudulent. Larkin peers down from the roof of the toolshed, where he’s been giving chase.
“Get him a pork pie. Go on.” Mr. Flood points at the fox.
“I won’t; they’re for your tea with a bit of potato salad.”
He shakes his head. “I’m fine and fat. I can spare it.” He pats his chest, which is savagely thin. His arms are worse.
Earlier, when he peeled off his clothes for laundering, the man went from gaunt to skeletal in a moment. I had two pairs of trousers, four shirts, and three jumpers off him. He had stood in his vest and underpants in the scullery, with a curve to his back like a bent bow. The shocking thinness of his limbs made his joints, feet, hands, and head look disproportionately large. A giant buckled by famine. His skin hung on his long frame like a flag on a pole on a windless day.