Daisy Chains

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  The contemplation of suicide crept from his belly, from his head, and from under his arms as if the thoughts blended with the stink of sweat. Worms crawled from the soles of his feet and from behind his neck. And then, as he knew she would, Olga came slipping from the shadows. “What misery, old fool. Well, you killed the one woman you could fuck, even if she wasn’t much of a pleasure anymore. She’d have fought. That, at least, would have increased the anticipation.”

  “Piss off, bitch,” Lionel muttered.

  “It’s you who needs to piss, ugly failure that you are. When did you last manage to come, then? When you killed Joyce. Yes, that was a satisfying hour. But now she’s gone. Done it – bummed it – no arse left – what? You want to fuck a donkey? It’s all you’ll get for every female in the country knows your face now. Your face and your bloody big flat feet. So listen to me, old fool. There’s nothing left but death. Shadows forever, and never dream again. What peace. What satisfaction.”

  Lionel sat on the damp foam mattress and fiddled with the feathers oozing from the torn corner of his pillow. Mice had been nesting. “Bugger off, dragon-shit. What if there’s an after-life? What about hell? What about retribution? I’m not going to face all that.”

  “So you’ll live forever to escape your just deserts? Besides, there’s nothing after death, and you know it. Gone means gone.”

  “Just one more. Get me another bitch to play with, and I’ll do it.” He looked up. A tiny squeeze of sunshine had slanted through the remaining beams of the roof. “Is that a sign? Is that a yes?” Lionel sighed. There was no car now. No way of picking up some wobble-arsed back-packer, or some pretty bit of flesh wanting a lift home.

  The world slid past without greeting. He had no television, no radio, no single friend or companion, no confidant except Olga and her whispered nightmares. He stole to live. Food, not nonsense newspapers. So whether they still searched for him, he didn’t know and didn’t care. Well, a grand and famous murderer, one of the most outstanding - they’d search forever. But he’d shoot himself before the arrest. No more sick, empty prisons, that had been the worst. For the first time that sodding miserable morning, Lionel chuckled, for now he had a gun. He’d never shot a gun before and had very little idea of how to aim. Without more bullets, he could never reload. But he’d manage a quick and probably painless death. “And you’ll die with me, Dragon-shit Olga. Bang, bang. And I’ll claw your fucking eyes out before I die.”

  Olga didn’t answer. Now Lionel was cheerful, so she slipped away, head beneath her wing.

  “Dinner time.” Lionel left the tent-cottage and strode through the tangle of thorns and sludge, approaching the forest path some way off. The hills and forests of the Cotswolds were his old stomping ground and he was comfortable there. It felt as though he had his own home again. Those thicker forests helped in other ways too for he had once again layered the broken boughs, leaf litter and torn bracken bushes, thorn thick, disguising the tiny cottage from all directions. No hint of it could be seen from above nor from the ground, and entering the first little door was easy only once you knew how to push past, and what to jump over. The scrubby bare hills of sheep droppings around the Cotswolds seemed like a different country.

  “Stomp, stomp.” He laughed at himself. There’s the old warehouse down on the village outskirts, and he’d pinch some potatoes, frozen pork chops and maybe even some sort of pudding if he could get in and out quickly enough.

  Olga was now nowhere to be seen.

  Southwark, a neat little apartment on the top floor, and if you stuck your head out at some slight risk, you could see the river. Furnished without imagination or taste, but centrally heated and a separate kitchen, however tiny, and a double bed with proper cotton sheets. No lift but running up three flights of stairs didn’t bother Tracy in the least.

  “I don’t have to share a bathroom and a loo,” she yelled to the world, waving her arms in the air. “All mine. I don’t have to clean someone else’s shit off the loo seat before I can sit on it myself. The bath is all white and shiny without stains. There’s a tiled floor. I don’t have to shove fifty pence in the meter before I can get any hot water. And no one else will thump on the door just as soon as I’ve sat down.”

  “So you like it?”

  “Bloody hell, do I ever? It’s pissing marvellous. Two pillows and a comfy mattress. A proper oven, big enough for a frozen pie. Oh, Lizzie, you’re a marvel.”

  “Glad you like it.” Personally Lizzie thought they could have managed something a bit better, but evidently this would be enough for the moment. “Now, no temptation to go back to the old business? No? Good. You’ll have to survive on the dole for the time being, but without any rent or other bills to pay, you should be Ok. So no opening doors unless I shout my name through the letterbox.”

  “I’m going to read. Endlessly. Lay in bed and read. And watch that lovely big telly.” It wasn’t as large as she’d hoped for, but it worked, and it was bigger than she’d owned before. “Except Game of Thrones isn’t on anymore.”

  “I’ll be back to see how you’re getting on tomorrow. And the day after I hope we’ll get the one I really want you to speak with. That’s DI Morrison and I’ve told you all about him, so I hope you’ll feel like a long chat.”

  “You mean an interview.”

  “Well, yes, I do. But a friendly one, and right here, not at the station. I’ll be here too of course, and there might be another female DI. Rita Ellis. I’ve never met her but she sounds nice.”

  “I never thought cops could be nice till I met you.” Tracy sniggered. “But now I reckon you’re all bloody saints and angels.”

  “I’ll give you my blessing after you answer all DI. Morrison’s questions,” Lizzie grinned back.

  It was two days later, and the flat wasn’t quite so tidy when Lizzie thumped on the door, calling, “Tracy, it’s me, Liz, and DI. Morrison’s here too. I hope you’re home.”

  Tracy flung open the door as if expecting Father Christmas. She was well covered in jeans and a jumper, but barefoot. “Come in,” she beamed. “I’ll make tea. I haven’t got any coffee. And I take it you’re all on duty and don’t want booze?”

  “Tea,” said Darcey, “would be wonderful. The booze part can come another day. Meet my companion DI. Ellis. I see they’ve supplied some adequate accommodation.”

  “Adequate?” squeaked Tracy. “It’s bloody wonderful.” And she waved her visitors to the living room chairs. A well cushioned and blue striped sofa sank a little as both women sat. Morrison took one of the matching chairs and stretched his legs as Tracy marched back in with a tray of steaming mugs.

  Morrison drank his tea and disguised the twitch of muscular distaste. He finished the milky cupful and smiled at Tracy. “Well,” he said. “I had no idea you existed just a month ago, Miss Sullivan. And now you’ve suddenly become the most interesting person I have probably ever interviewed.”

  “Crap,” said Tracy, but she was smiling too.

  “Knitting?”

  “That girl needs a warm jumper by the sound of things,” said Yvonne, disappearing behind the swathes of purple fluff. “Poor little soul. And I met her mum once when she came here. So sweet. So desperate. And someone told me the girl likes mohair. I expect it was Sylvia who told me.”

  “I think that’s the jumper she was wearing when that lunatic snatched her up.” Sheila sat opposite, fiddling with the remote control on the radio. “But maybe she won’t want to be reminded of that.”

  “Oh dear.” Yvonne dropped a stitch and scrabbled to reclaim it on the thick red needle. The purple mohair on red knitting needles was attracting attention.

  Stella said, “Keeping busy, dear?”

  “Well, it keeps me off the street corners.”

  “But you won’t pick up any nice men with purple mohair, dear.”

  “Very funny, Stella dear,” Yvonne sniffed and continued knitting. “But it’s Sylvie and Harry I want to talk to. Whatever’s happened to that little girl,
anyway? I’d like to know she’s all right.”

  It was Ruby who called from the other side of the room, closer to the fire. “She’s due back tomorrow. She phoned me last night. Always keeps in touch, you know.”

  The sound of the hoover echoed from upstairs and Stella flapped her hanky upwards. “I suppose that’s Lavender getting ready for them now.”

  Dennis, sitting on the same couch and in danger of being poked in the eye with long red knitting needles, was grumbling quietly to himself with regard to silly women talking through his favourite radio programme, when he suddenly remembered something even more important than The Archers. “That old duffer from the cake shop, Iris, she chatted to me the other day when I went in there for a decent coffee. Says the other girl, Kate isn’t it? Well, she went to visit the girl who got kidnapped. Wanted to say sorry or something. Mother wanted to throw her out, and there was a right battle outside the house. The son came out and pulled the mother off. Bit of a fisticuffs. The cops got called. All very silly.”

  “What was silly about it?” demanded Stella. “Kate wanted to say sorry. Fair enough. The poor girl’s mother wanted nothing to do with that disgusting family. Fair enough. How could they know that Kate was different to her husband? Fair enough. Police were called. Fair enough.”

  It was the voice from behind the knitting that sniffed, saying, “But Kate knew, didn’t she? Maybe not all the details, but she knew girls were taken for the little triplet. Knowing and not saying. That’s dreadful and it makes her as bad as the rest.”

  “But threatened with death, and losing her daughter if she talked,” Stella added. “Fair enough.”

  “I think,” said Amy from another corner of the room, “it’s not fair at all. It’s dark, so it’s time for bed.”

  Percival looked up and folded his newspaper. “Only seven thirty in the evening, my dear. A little early.”

  “Well, that’s all very well,” Amy told him, slightly embarrassed, “if people are going to squabble and fight in the streets, my dear, I don’t want to get involved. My arms aren’t as strong as they used to be. I haven’t got into any big fights outside the pub since I was in my twenties.”

  Everyone stared and Percival looked somewhat perplexed. “Amy dearest, I married you when you were twenty-four. I really don’t remember you ever punching out the opposition. I think you’ve been watching West Side Story on the television again.”

  Since everyone was now staring at everyone else, everyone heard when the radio crackled and announced the breaking news. Another woman had been discovered outside Nottingham. The remains had been dismembered, and the body was as yet unidentified.

  “Oh, shit,” said Stella. “Here we go again.

  It was a large, bright bedroom and the spring sunshine was trickling between the curtains. She could hear the glass rattle in the wind but cuddled up in bed she didn’t have to worry about that. Indeed, she didn’t have to worry about anything, which seemed utterly blissful. Nightmares were still common, but even they weren’t every night anymore.

  Niles sat on the edge of her bed. “Well, little sister, is it nice being home again?”

  She nodded. “But it isn’t home really, is it?”

  “From now on, it is. Online generosity, and the nurses too. Even that woman at the Rochester Manor.”

  “Well, it’s a nicer house,” Eve admitted. “Bigger rooms and a bigger garden. And not close to the bloody cake shop anymore.”

  Niles paused. “That woman’s not to blame,” he said eventually. “The husband is off making big money and evading the law in the Middle East somewhere. The oldest triplet is dead. And the other one – well – he’ll die soon.”

  “He should be in prison.”

  “He is, in a way,” Niles said softly. “A mental institution, and locked up, never to be free. That’s prison, more or less. Hopefully they’ve stuck electric wires into his head. That’s what they do in those places, don’t they? Or cut bits of brain out?”

  “I don’t think they do any of that stuff anymore,” Eve said without conviction. “Anyway, I just don’t want to think about him. Talk to me about football or your girlfriend or what Mum’s making for dinner.”

  “Shepherd’s Pie, Liverpool won yesterday which you know since you watched it and yelled your head off, and I haven’t got a girlfriend.”

  “Fibs, Niles. I saw you talking to her outside last night.”

  “Talking doesn’t mean wildly romantic. She’s just Jim’s daughter. I work with Jim, and the girl brought a message. I got rid of the last girl. She only wanted me since she thought I was famous. It was you she wanted to meet. I told her to get lost.”

  Eve lay back against the pillows. She still thanked the Lord every night for each of the four pillows, the two soft pink sheets, the soft luxury quilt, and the real toilet just outside. She had dreamed of a real bed, comfortably sleep-worthy and soft, for all those weeks. She had dreamed of her mother’s voice.

  “Night-night, my darling Evie. I’ll wake you with hot chocolate in the morning. Let’s say eight thirty?”

  She had dreamed of smiles, of people waving to her in the street. Of learning to drive and buying a car – the first in the family. She had dreamed of plates piled high with dinner. Oh, the perfumes of roasted food. Of creamy cakes. Of fried eggs, bacon, onions, sausages. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Snacks and drinks. More than she could eat. More than she could want. Ice cream. Chocolate eclairs – oh, my dear sweet God almighty, let me rediscover happiness. Just simple satisfaction. That dreamy contentment that slips into your head almost unseen. On a warm sunny day with a bright blue sky over the hills. Birds singing. The kitten trying to climb into bed with you,. and its furry coat tickling your chin. Your favourite song on the radio. Mum poking her head around the door, “Aren’t you asleep yet, my love? Want another hot drink?”

  There had been so many yearning dreams. Not for wild excitement or the happiness of love and riches. No, just the contentment of a peaceful day. Hopes fulfilled.

  She looked sleepily at Niles. “You’re such a darling, Niles.”

  “Shall I go ahead and kill the bugger, Evie?”

  “What? And be as bad as him?” She had put on weight and the forty kilo wretchedness which had nearly cracked her bones was now a comfortable fifty-eight. The little pads of flesh on her stomach and thighs were now her pride and joy. Once in the past, she wouldn’t have wanted them. But she was still scraggy and still pale as a zombie. “Leave the poor little sod alone. He’s sick. Terribly sick. It’s his brother Maurice that ought to die. He was the one that grabbed me, and he knew exactly what for. Nearly as bad as the creepy Mark. So the pig should die too.”

  “More difficult. He’s abroad.”

  “Niles, I don’t want you in prison. To come and visit you in the clink. Oh, please! Let’s just learn happiness all over again from the beginning.”

  Her hair was growing back. A few of the cuts and scratches were fading. One of the smaller burns had disappeared. She had been through four operations and hadn’t suffered from any of them. The relief of being free, of seeing and hugging her family, and the kindness that the nursing staff and police had shown her had been almost enough to obliterate the pain. Pain? She’d experienced enough of that, and any minor discomfort seemed no problem at all.

  Niles kissed her cheek. She kissed him back. She hoped she might be lucky enough not to dream of Milton for once.

  Chapter Four

  “Do you have any idea where your mother is now?” asked Sylvia. “or don’t you want to know?”

  Tracy had agreed to meet Sylvia and Harry. She had liked the idea. “Are they nice?”

  “I find them intelligent and extremely pleasant,” Morrison nodded. “They are particularly helpful and have been of considerable assistance over the past few years.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t suggest you meet people we think are horrible,” said Rita. “I suppose you think the oldies are usually silly and boring?”

  “I’d sleep with
Bill Nighy any day,” said Tracy, but everybody had ignored her.

  It was the following morning when Sylvia and Harry trooped in with Darcey and Rita, squashed into the little living room, and were brought the usual mugs of hot weak tea. Morrison had already spoken to Tracy for several hours the day before, and Rita had asked Harry and Sylvia to skirt the real story, and simply chat around the edges.

  Tracy had shrugged at Sylvia’s question. “I never want to see her again. But it’s been a few years, so sometimes I admit I get curious. Is the old cow still alive? As for my dad, please kill him off quick.”

  “I suggest automatic combustion,” muttered Rita.

  “Only the good die young,” said Harry, tapping his own head. There was a small bald patch, but his brown hair still grew around the edges.

  Dad’s in his early fifties,” said Tracy. “That’s not young anymore. I’d shoot him myself if I thought I could get away with it.”

  “So you might know where he is?”

  “Well actually,” frowned Tracy, “I might. Two possibilities. He was born in Leicestershire, somewhere in the north with the winds blowing like hurricanes. He told me he was blown from the womb, and that’s what gave him acromegaly. He could even go back to try and find his old home. But he hated his mum too, so I doubt he’d be sentimental about it..”

  Rita was writing furiously, filling pages of her notebook. Harry said, “The shed he loved in Gloucestershire doesn’t exist anymore. And there have been two nasty murders in Nottingham. That’s near Leicester.”

  “But I think he’s more likely to be back in Gloucestershire,” said Tracy, leaning forwards as though divulging wicked secrets. “It’s where he met Joyce. He sort of made up stories to himself about being good and settling down to be happily married. I mean, it was bigamy anyway, but that’s not the point. He loved the forests. Oh, they had a proper scruffy little house somewhere, not that I ever got invited there and wouldn’t have gone anywhere near him even if he’d asked. But before Joyce, he lived in a sort of thatched cottage place deep amongst the trees on the Wiltshire border. I never went there either, but I heard what it’s like. And I know he kept all his precious souvenirs there. They were the only things that mattered to him in the end.”